


your ghosts are now haunting me too.

by the_ocean_weekender



Series: does it trouble your mind the way you trouble mine? [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Coming Out, Drama, Everyone Is Gay, F/F, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Oblivious Harry, Period-Typical Racism, Post-War, Romance, Trauma, and alive, dean thomas calls the wizarding world out on its bullshit and gets his life together, everyone loves neville longbottom, how does an asexual lesbian write a gratuitous handjob? by increasing the word count, i have forgotten how to tag, it's 1998 and it is glorious, luna is a beautiful angel and i will protect her with my life, neville is the best and finally recognised
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-09-26 10:01:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 59,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17139722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_ocean_weekender/pseuds/the_ocean_weekender
Summary: The class of 1998 deserves a fucking break. None more so than Dean Thomas, who now has got a job, moved in with his boyfriend, and gotten his life together. Or at least he tells everyone he has. A war has come and gone and he has more important things to worry about than events that happened when they were all young and dumb teenagers. Yet somehow, he just can't think of anything except for the things they did when they were young and dumb teenagers.Sequel to does it trouble your mind the way you trouble mine?edit 2.3.19 18:36pm: last chapter is typed up, it just needs to be proof read. I am aiming to upload tomorrow





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have planned all of this fic out!
> 
> (it's 28k longer than I intended and I wanted to publish it on xmas day so it's multi-chaptered now, enjoy!)
> 
> tw: swearing, ptsd, internalised homophobia, racism, and wizarding tom-fuckery.
> 
> 4573 words

I.

_Saturday 31st July 1998_

 

It’s a useless exercise. Dean’s listening out for the same thing that drove him out to this isolated, silent vigil on the sofa in the first place- Seamus’ breathing as he sleeps. His peaceful inhales, his long exhales. Those tiny soft noises that show he is alive and well in Dean’s arms.

 

Dean spent too long on the run for it to calm him anymore.

 

One day, he thinks. One day, they’re going to fit together again. All the hollow spaces between their ribs and in their bones will be repaired with something solid. Something that will make him heavy enough to feel anchored in this life again. Something that will ground him well enough that Seamus’ hands holding his stops being a life line.

 

He really needs to stop doing that- Seamus needs his sleep. Dean _needs_ him to sleep. Needs to know that one of them at least is following the natural order of the world and sleeping when the sun goes down. It’s something, knowing that You-Know-Who didn’t rob them of that; something he doesn’t think is a comfort or at least shouldn’t be as comforting as it feels.

 

Some nights, Dean prays that it’s going to be love that saves them. That they’re going to be so in love they’ll never go a day without each other again. They’ll never feel unsafe again, never be scared again, never mourn for anyone again and that’s- that’s not going to be healthy. No amount of trauma can excuse you forsaking the world entirely. One day, they- Seamus- _Dean_ \- will have to go back to the world. The world where love forced Dean to leave his family wizard and muggle alike.Where love planted Seamus between the Carrows and first years. Love is what kept their feet from fleeing the battleground and luck is what kept them alive.

 

Dean does not know what is keeping him alive now.

 

If love has a place in the world after all that has happened, it is going to have to carve one for itself. There is a lingering remnant in the flame he and Seamus keep sheltered in their tiny little house on the outskirts of this little village and they cannot help any more. He fears that it will involve ripping into what’s left of their hearts and it’s quite poetic how they may destroy what they’re struggling to save but it hurts too- Dean is an artist not a writer.

 

If there ever comes a time when it stops hurting Dean prays it will be for the right reasons. Already he lives more of his life in the grey blanket of 2am than he does in the sun and he hasn’t finished a drawing in three weeks and Seamus is worried about him and they haven’t got any idea how to go on except for the knowledge that this is what being alive is. it hurts and that is also what being alive has become.

 

With a sigh that settles on the grandfather clock he turns onto his side and buries his face in the corner of the settee and muses over what his life has become over the past two months. The darkness closes over him like a huge hungry mouth and it’s the nicest thing he’s ever felt second only to the blonde sleeping in the bedroom upstairs.

 

Their house is an eclectic scramble of muggle life with no wizardry; Dean isn’t even sure where he’s left his wand and it should be scary, this vulnerability, this existence. Instead, he is just tired. He’s survived the Dark Lord and there is nothing left for him to fear and there is nothing left for him to feel. The past year he slept with wand in hand- if you could call that approximation of dreams ‘sleep’- and when they moved in two months to this day (or, two months when the clock finally ticks over to 11am) Dean went to bed and put his wand on the bedside table on Seamus’ side of the bed because if he hadn’t he’d have let the darkness in hand in hand and it isn’t even so much he wants to avoid those thoughts and feelings at all costs but that he doesn’t want it anyway near Seamus. And now they hardly interact with the wizarding world at all. They see- they see their friends, when the wounds aren’t too raw, when they can manage it. Dean isn’t going to just abandon them. Dean _loves_ them. But, he can’t. So they live without any wizardry but the way the leaves on the trees swirl when Seamus apparates to work each morning. If someone had told either of them in fourth year that pyro-extraordinaire Seamus Finnigan would have been happy in an admin job sorting out the _Ministry of Magic’s_ shelves they would have laughed themselves silly. When Seamus came home and told him he’d gotten a job there were tears in his eyes.

 

Maybe it’s not what they had dreamed of, but it pays for the television set that Dean’s commandeered outside of the waking hours. He keeps it blaring out white noise and static and sometimes he even manages to sleep when he’s supposed to and even when he doesn’t it dulls the screams enough that he disappears into the grey blankness until the sun rises.

 

Dean is starting to think that there’s something wrong with him.

 

The thought makes him laugh until he wheezes.

 

He counts it as a victory because he doesn’t cry afterwards.

 

He falls asleep mistaking his breath for Seamus’.

 

(The waking is a fuddled misery.)

 

***

 

He is doing the dishes when Seamus comes stumbling in, sleepy and soft and languid and a shock of warmth when he tangles himself around Dean’s back. “Hey, you.”

 

Dean turns around and kisses him, mindful of how his hands are wet with suds. When they break apart, Seamus is standing on his tiptoes and smiling up at him. “Hello,” Dean finally replies. Feels himself smile for the first time in twelve hours, which makes sense because his heart sleeps when the sun sets and isn’t stirred until it and Seamus rise again. That would make Dean the moon, only he feels too dark too grim too in-love to be parted forever and never see this sight again and, well, according to the policemen that sniffed around the estate like stray dogs when he was growing up he has skin dark enough to be someone’s shadow, so a shadow he is.

 

There is irony in how he left the muggle world only to go on the run from Nazis again. Strange, how he had felt so happy going into that bright future at eleven and now at eighteen he wants nothing more than to go back to the past. Only it’s not strange at all, with trauma. The voice in his head has glasses and nods along and hums when he thinks over something deep, which is laughable, really: he’s lived through, fought in and survived a fucking war. That isn’t something that can be fixed with a Hush-Puppies, pipe, ‘let’s talk about your mother’ psychologist from one of his mum’s dog-eared self-help books.

 

Seamus pulls him in for another kiss and Dean is thankful he doesn’t have to go to work today because he wants to kiss him again and again but he has to finish the dishes.

 

“Mmm, you’re up early.”

 

Seamus sleeps in on a Saturday likes it’s his God-given right. “I was missing you.”

 

It’s accusing but not. Dean lets another smile spread over his face. “I missed you, too.” He’s pressed up against the edge of the counter as Seamus burrows closer against him hot and burning and touching him every place he can reach and _damn the dishes_. He captures his boyfriend’s mouth in another kiss.  

 

***

 

When it’s all over and Dean’s brain has come back from its vacation, he realises that this is the first time he’s been in their bed proper for nearly a week.

 

(Is it bad, that he’s living out his life counting up the days from his lasts? The improvement on counting down days until his last is only marginal.)

 

 _You’re beautiful_ , Dean thinks on the spread-eagled form of his boyfriend in the sheets beside him. Painted gold in the morning sun and spread out calm like honey and summer afternoons. In places, his skin dips and crinkles in scars and not-long-healed wounds and normally this upsets Dean no end, but in this light they all blend into the canvas of his skin so well they’re just shadows until Dean looks close enough. Even the slim line running over his nose- the faintest of them all- doesn’t bring forth its usual dismay. Instead, it just looks silver. Almost as if it was placed and positioned on his face with care by fairies as he lay sleeping. The idea is so nice he thinks that it’s him giggling at first, until he blinks out of his reverie and looks and realises the river is burbling from Seamus’ lips not his.

 

“What?” and he’s almost chocked to hear himself laughing too.

 

“Your eyes,” comes the reply, “-all, all _squinty_!”

He’s glad blushes don’t show up on him as he ducks his head in embarrassment. “They are _not_!”

 

“Are too!” Seamus pushes himself up on his elbows to cackle down at him. The sound washes over Dean like a waterfall.

 

It continues until Dean hits him with a pillow. It continues throughout the ensuing pillow fight. It continues as they chase each other down the stairs and out into the garden and only shrieks louder when an early morning dog walker spots them over the fence.

 

***

 

It’s nearing ten by the time they get around to eating breakfast. “Brunch,” Dean shrugs when Seamus comments on it, feeling careless and happy and desperate to keep going under its momentum.

 

“What?”

 

“A muggle thing.” The kettle clicks off and he pours boiling hot water into their mugs- they’ve amassed quite a collection, since they started living together. Mugs, it seems, are a safe house warming gift. Seamus’ reaction to the one that changed from a black square to a picture of a snowman had been priceless, and Dean’s got a charcoal triptych tucked between the pages of his latest sketchbook to work on later.

 

Every time he makes tea, he counts the remaining mugs hanging on the hooks on the wall. There’s always twelve or thirteen, and he feels something come to rest inside of him as he finishes this time. Nine.Ten.Eleven.Twelve. The world is in order, still. He focuses on the mugs in his hand so he doesn’t drop them- Dean picks a new one every time, but Seamus’ favourite is the tea-rex _Jurassic Park_ one ever since Dean let him loose in Woolworths and he stumbled on the VHS.

 

Seamus is still smiling at him, but- “What is it?”

 

“I just…” he takes his mug and cradles it in his hands and sways slightly from side to side, the smile never quite fading away, “You look happy, this morning. It’s a good look on you.”

 

“I feel happy,” Dean agrees, surprised to find it isn’t a lie. He softens slightly, and as he goes round the other side of the kitchen table to sit down he adds, “You make me happy.”

 

Seamus smiles wider, leans across to kiss him- can’t reach, being so short, and has to make do pecking his nose instead, “Yeah?”

 

“Don’t let it go to your head. Maybe I just slept well.”

 

His face drops as he sits back down in his chair. “You, uh- slept on the sofa last night.”

 

Dean mentally kicks himself.

 

“Which is fine!” Seamus hastily says. “It’s fine. You need- you do what you need, just, is there- is it something I…”

 

“No!” his voice is surprisingly harsh for being so brittle. “Just. You-uh, you wheeze. In your sleep, i mean. I- I heard you.” It’s ridiculous how he’s apologising for lying beside his lover and not being able to help hear him breathe. Like a confession that he doesn’t trust Seamus to keep himself alive.

 

“Uh, yeah, I uh, I do that, now, sometimes. Quite a lot, actually, ever since- ever since fifth year and- you know?”

 

Dean does know. Dean didn’t know then but he does know now. He’s really sorry for being reminded of it. Merlin’s beard, was the war not enough?

 

A lot has happened since fifth year. It feels like it’s been a long time. It isn’t a long time. They’re only just old enough to be muggle adults. It’s been too long.

 

“Do you... know why?”

 

“No. But it’s my own fault I suppose, ain’t it, really? Being so stupid like that.”

 

“You’re not stupid. An idiot, for sure, but you’re not stupid. And, anyway, it’s better than if you were snoring, right?”

 

A smile lifts Seamus’ mouth, “You old romantic, you.”

 

Dean tries to smile back.

 

***

 

II.

 

_Sunday 1 st September 1996_

 

At the start of sixth year they come off the Hogwarts Express holding hands and no one says a word. It’s... nice. Considering the angst that it took for them to get to this point, some would say that it’s a bit anti-climatic. Considering the angst Seamus went through to get to this point, Dean is of the opinion that the next climatic event that happens in relation to them and what they now get up to between the bed sheets will come far too soon.

 

Seamus bodily picks Luna up off the ground and swoops her into one of the carriages and sets her off giggling and blushing, which is a good look on her and makes Seamus smile and when he looks over at Dean he’s still smiling. He takes the air from Dean’s lungs. Soft green and gold dapples his face and it’s warm, sitting next to him hand in hand surrounded by their friends.

 

Getting up to their dormitory and into bed feels impossibly awkward and strikes the reality of being sixteen into Dean’s heart like an anvil and it hurts, it _hurts_.

 

“What’s wrong?!” Seamus fusses over him at once; hands coming up to embrace him like spindly pale pigeons.

 

“Just- just- are we sleeping together?” he blurts out and the look on his boyfriend’s face brings regret. Boyfriend- _boyfriend_ \- how long will he get to keep saying that? How long before he ruins this and all this grief and pain is for nothing? How long- how long- how long- how long has he got? Life is passing him by at a hundred miles an hour- he and Seamus went flying over the holidays- he curled round Seamus’ back and the fields sped past- the world hasn’t slowed down since then and he’s going to miss everything in life and then he’s going to be dead. “In- the bed, I mean. Are we- can we sleep in the same bed, please?”

 

“Of course we can!” and his hands pull him in to a tight hug. “Were you worried we wouldn’t?”

 

“I- maybe- _awkward,_ you know? I didn’t want-“ he’s just wasted five minutes of his life being so bloody stupid.

 

“Dean. Do you want to share a bed with me?”

 

He nods.

 

Seamus turns and hops on top of the bed, then pats the space beside him, “Get in, then. My feet are getting cold.”

 

They huddle under the sheets together, giggling and winding down the day in a warm burgundy hollow with the curtains closed and rain pattering against the windows.

 

 

 

 

“Do you think... anyone will mind?” Seamus asks in the morning, twitching his fingers against each other over and over. “About...  us?”

He won’t look at Dean.

 

Dean leans down close and kisses him. “No one who matters.”

 

 

 

 

By the beginning of October there's a fucking war on and Dean considers inviting Neville into bed with them, or Luna, or perhaps even getting the whole house to sleep in the common room. Exposure feels like safety when you're crammed into a pile of bodies that you can hear breathing along with you and these sleepless nights lead to the rumour that ‘Drarry’ is now sharing a bed and _good for them_ Dean thinks, _we do it_. There’s nothing like the comfort of a lover when they are your first love.

 

(If Draco gets caught sneaking out any time this week then Dean and Seamus are going to lose the entire betting pool to Ernie Macmillan. He doesn’t know anyone in fourth, fifth or sixth years who doesn’t have a stake in when ‘Drarry’ is going to be exposed officially and if he’s got to play dirty to keep them from being revealed until Halloween then he will. These are very important matters that don’t stop for an impending war.)

 

***

 

III.

 

_Sunday 31 st May 1998_

 

Once he explains to Seamus what the metal box he’s moving into their new house actually _is_ , the Irishman is more than enthusiastic about having a muggle radio living on their kitchen counter. Dean goes to take their plastic bag full of hastily-brought toiletries from _Woolworths_ upstairs to the bathroom and leaves him to play- hopefully he blows the thing up before he discovers the heavy metal station- whilst he looks around their new house. It’s small. Pastel-walled with big windows, even in the bathroom. They’ll have to put some net curtains up before either of them has a shower, else a passerby might get an eyeful as they trundle along the fields that their garden backs out on to. The kitchen is a quaint, faded yellow Dean already loves, and the lounge is homey and fits two big sofas. There are only four rooms in total, so he’ll have to do his artwork at the kitchen table, but it’s a compromise he’s happy to make.

 

In the bedroom- _their_ bedroom, he realises, which sends a pleasant shiver down his spine- there won’t be hardly any room to move once they bring the bed up. _At least we won’t have to fuck on the floor_ he reasons to himself, then bites his lip to suppress the dirty grin he can feel come over his face. It feels _wrong_ , almost, to be making dirty jokes when at the beginning of the month they were fighting in the second biggest war the wizarding world has ever seen.

 

Dean hopes it’s the last, because he can’t go through it again.

 

Next time, someone will notice he and Seamus are conspicuously absent from the rubble, and force them to stay. And Dean knows that they tried- he tried- to stay behind and help this time round, twenty nine nights ago, but he couldn’t and it feels like weakness. It feels like a betrayal to admit that after a year on the run the sight of that old castle struck fear into his heart so potent he could hardly breathe and he was tiptoeing everywhere because he didn’t want to step on any body parts. After being parted from Hogwarts for a year with an axe hanging over his head, actually being there made him feel like the axe was an inch away from coming down on him and killing him. Like he was sneaking around a place he shouldn’t be, and there were death-eaters around every corner that would sooner or later find him and make his corpse a bloodier mess than Seamus’ face.

 

Harry didn’t recognise Seamus when they saw each other again. Dean did. Dean recognised him. That’s the part that hurts the most.

 

Dean splashes his face with ice-cold water from the lurid pink bathroom sink and rests his forehead against the mirror set into the cupboard above it. His breath clouds onto the silvery surface like a patronus, smoke coming off a cauldron, light glinting off a Slytherin banner. He closes his eyes and revels in how his shoulders ache from carrying their scant few possessions up the stairs. No more magic. Dean Thomas is done with magic. It won’t work of course- if another war breaks out, he’s sure they’ll be some of the first people to know, but for now, no more fucking magic. He remembers his grandfather- on his mum’s side, because his _real_ dad ran off so as not to damage his squeaky white clean reputation, left his mum seventeen and pregnant the _bastard_ \- who had fought in the war against the Germans and couldn’t hear a plane take off from Heathrow without flinching. This whole century is cursed, Dean is starting to realise. One war after another no matter what world you choose to live in. There’s no getting away from the hatred, and there’s no way to live without shedding blood, and there’s very few people who don’t give up after a while and start trying to at least spit it into the face of their enemies.

 

Through the window he can see a huge expanse of green and yellow fields. A whole army of any kind could march up to their house without any challenge. Dean shudders; feels the mirror dig into his skin. It finds a new place to rest with each tremor and it’s cold every time.

 

However long later, he manages to step back. Breathes. He’s still breathing, for whatever that’s worth. Seamus is downstairs- he can _hear_ Seamus downstairs and- is he- is he swearing?

 

Lamenting leaving his wand in the living room, Dean races downstairs and doesn’t breathe again until he’s close enough to distinguish the pout in his tone.

 

“How do you bloody well work this, then? Dean? DEAN!”

 

“What?”

 

“I said- oh, come in here, will you?-i said ‘how does this work’?”

 

“Oh, like- see you turn it on, first, _here_ , and then you turn this until it plays- there, you’re doing it, see, now- he waves his hands vaguely- you try to find a station.”

 

Out of the radio comes a blaring happy voice with a grin in its teeth.

 

 .!..!..YOU’RE LISTEING TO MAGIC FM! JOIN US THIS AFTERNOON FOR-

 

They look at each other over the jingle and turn away and laugh themselves silly. It’s the first time either of them has laughed in twenty nine days.

 

***

 

IV.

 

_Saturday 4 th July 1998_

After breakfast, Seamus sits on the back doorstep and smokes a cigarette. It is Dean’s turn to do the dishes. He washes and dries and puts away every single piece of crockery, trying to work himself into a bad temper over the fact that his boyfriend is damaging his lungs and can’t stop the whole kitchen smelling foul even when he blows the smoke away out in to the garden.

 

He didn’t sleep last night and he doesn’t have the energy to be angry. He feels second-hand, like nearly everything that they own. _Damaged goods_ , the people on television and in films would say; he came back from the war damaged and broken and he hasn’t touched his sketchbook in three days and there used to be a time when he would fall asleep drawing and colouring and wake up with colours streaked and smudged into his skin and Seamus would laugh and kiss them before wiping them off and Dean kind of regrets letting him, now, because hasn’t part of the problem always been his colour?

 

Once, in fourth year, he tried to explain the muggle world to the rest of the dorm. Put across how glass smashed like water splashing on the ground and how everyone knew what the sound meant. How his mother kept him and his sisters inside all of the 1991 Easter Holidays instead of taking them to the new swimming pool like she’d promised, and how in some ways that had been worse because they’d had nothing to occupy themselves with but the television showing what had happened. How it happened again in 1992 and how he wondered, sometimes, if there was an equation that let bigger people calculate how many happy memories you sacrificed for each shade darker that you got.

 

It is seven- six- four years later and Dean still has never come to an answer. _The war was answer enough_. The bigger people came to the conclusion: never enough. That is why he is in this sorry state wondering why his eighteenth birthday is a reality when he thought his seventeenth was his swan song.

 

(His friends hadn't been able to understand. Only Harry. Understanding is only gifted upon the souls that live through the nightmares as dark as their skin. You have to be consumed by the great big huge mouth of the world that is looming black as pitch and not so very distinguishable from a grave. Perhaps because to be born as they are is a death sentence.)

 

Anyway- Dean doesn’t like that Seamus smokes and he doesn’t say anything and Seamus smokes on the back step looking out into the garden. Through the window, Dean can see the smoke from his cigarette spilling over the morning grass. It’s not like he has a _bad_ life, is it? Compared to the children he went to primary school with, he’s moved out, graduated, settled down, fell in love, got a job that doesn’t involve an office, could potentially adopt a dog, he’s doing just fine and some of the children he went to primary school with would happily sacrifice their youth to a war if it meant they got a life afterwards. It’s not like he’s damaged irreparably, beyond all words, never going to be right again.

 

He won’t be. He feels it in his bones.

 

The children he went to primary school with have yet to graduate and God, does that make Dean feel old.

 

 _He_ has yet to graduate, oh _shit-_

 

Don’t think about it, Dean, don’t think about it.

 

He’s too tired to think.

 

The children he went to primary school with have nothing to do on the weekends but sleep and study and smile as if nothing can hurt them.

 

Perhaps he’s doing them a disservice- most of the children he went to primary school with came from the same estate as him, still live on the same estate, will more than likely die on the same estate, some very soon for things they cannot help being born with.

 

He wants to know why Seamus smokes.

 

There are lots of things they don’t ask each other and maybe it’s for the best. Maybe it’s for the same reason he didn’t tell his family Cedric Diggory died until he couldn’t and Lee had to do it for him. Maybe- maybe- maybe- maybe- maybe he’s tired.

 

“Dean?”

He looks over. Seamus is sitting back and looking at him, resting tilted against the door frame with his bare feet buried in the grass, dirt between his toes. Their tiny, drafty house is nothing like Malfoy Manor and that will have to do.

 

With soft, tentative steps, Dean stumbles over to where his boyfriend sits and curls himself up in the doorway too; awkwardly and too big onto the door step with a soft, flowing warmth spreading through his side and the wind blows the smoke out of his face. At some point, when he’s as comfortable in this position as he’s going to get, he sleeps.

 

What a regression this is- he cannot sleep without a light on.

 

***


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 6407 words

 

V.

 

_Wednesday 18 thOctober 1996_

 

A hand floats in up to the wrist to his vision and turns off the alarm. Within the newly-created silence, Dean feels the air trembling as it looks for what it’s lost. A smile looms into his eyes and a mouth leans close and kisses him gently.

 

 

 

Six weeks into sixth year, Harry fucking Potter realises that he and Seamus are actually _together like that_.

 

Dean can’t remember how to breathe. The fact that he could just a minute ago is a miracle he doesn’t think he’ll ever be capable of understanding. He and Seamus are holding hands- Dean can count the number of days they haven’t done so on two fingers. One of them is shaking like a leaf, and he doesn’t know which of them it is. He doesn’t know how to breathe. He doesn’t think he’ll ever know how to breathe again.

 

“How didn’t you work it out?” Hermione asks. She has a voice that _gets a tone_ his mum would say; snootily clever and shrilling with the tension Dean can see straining her spine under her robes. It all of a sudden occurs to him that Seamus and him are the test- there is more riding upon Harry's answer than he knows. A hundred times more than what his boyfriend would have dreamed six months ago. It's a weight that spells the final bit of air from his lungs Dean didn't know he had.

 

"I thought they were just friends!" with an innocence that'd put Bambi to shame.

 

“Friends that sleep in the same bed?” Ron asks, sceptical and doing that eyebrow thing he does when his best mate is being particularly stupid.

 

“I thought! I didn’t realise you were having a- a- an affair!”

 

“Oh my God.” Hermione’s relief sputters out in high-pitched words. “You were having a covert affair!”

 

They double over with laughter and not hurt. From his de-elevated position, Dean sees Katie Bell collecting her winnings from Ernie Macmillan and only laughs harder. Somewhere in the midst of it all, he can hear Seamus laughing too, twinkling like fairy lights.

 

 

 

With the quickness of a thousand teenagers whispering into the night, the wind changes and the rumour mill muses if Draco and Harry are ever going to admit to having a covert affair. The phrase pulls a wave of snickers every time it’s uttered; Dean marvels at the _magic_ that’s transformed Seamus from his fifth year skeleton to this untempered star.

 

***

 

VI.

 

_Monday 2 nd August 1998_

 

He dreams, and it is the sea. He’s drowning. He's not drowning- he is the water. He’s nothing but water and it feels beautiful because for once it is not tears. Everything is calm and nothing hurts. All he can see is the sun glinting off the sea. There’s a purple bruise if he looks up far enough to see it. it might be the sun. Or it might be the body he’s left lying on the shore, hand combing through the water.

 

He doesn’t mind. Someone else can have his body. Someone else can put it to good use. Someone in need. They can turn it into whatever they need, because he isn’t going to be in it.

 

…

 

He isn’t in his body.

 

But he can feel as the sea sweeps all around him and pours into his mouth and into his ribcage there’s nothing in his through his ribs his body he has a body and it’s sinking and he feels nothing but the sea the sea the sea

 

Dean wakes up- not gasping, but checking the air is definitely real with every breath. Grasping each one with shuddering gasps.It’s dark; that’s the only way he can tell he’s completely awake now. He breathes. Feels the air in his lungs and the ache in his heart.

 

He’s floating. He’s not floating. He’s on the sofa thrumming with magic in his bones in the night. White noise is spilling out of the television set, flowing over the screen like a waterfall--

 

_the sea the sea the sea_

 

\--and curling over him. When he dares to close his eyes again, he digs the heels of his hands unto the sockets and knuckles down until blue stars explode behind his eyelids and the television sounds like waves.

 

***

 

Seamus is worrying about him, so Dean drags his sketchbook onto the kitchen table and tries to at least open it. His elbow ends up knocking over his paint water and the spine breaks with a crack when he puts it on top of the radiator to dry.

 

 _It’s August_ , he remembers. _The heating isn’t on_.

 

Magic would mend it.

 

He won’t mend it.

 

When he returns to the kitchen, his paints have scattered on the table, the chairs, the stove, the walls and possibly the ceiling, but Seamus won’t think to look up there, so it doesn’t count. Vision seizes him and his fingers twitch spasmodically until he digs them into the pot of blue acrylic and then drags the edges of his fingernails through the white and along the eddies.

 

It’s two hours later when he steps away: back screaming, chest heaving, table nothing but an expanse of sea sea sea. He can’t remember if he’s eaten today. The radiator is burning his sketchbook.

 

***

 

Monday to Friday Seamus gets home at five oh two and greets Dean with a wave as he peers through the net curtains. Monday to Friday, Dean doesn’t come away from the window until he hears the front door lock, then they kiss and ask each other how their day was. They go on. Dean explains as Seamus is pulling his shirt over his head that they’re going to have to have dinner on the sofa because he’s using the table for his art work. The lie is worth the smile. _Is it really such a lie?_ he ponders, neither happy nor sad about it.

 

His boyfriend takes the news well.

 

“It’s nice out today,” he says with a smile spun of gold, pulling his jumper down around his knees (it used to be Dean’s, but Seamus commandeered it in fourth year because ‘it fits just right!’. It reminds Dean of the _Spice Girls_ , and used to make him laugh every time). Every word expands in his mouth like the slow build of a marble statue. “Can we eat in the garden?” Dean agrees. He cooks whilst Seamus lugs the fold-out chairs through the kitchen into the garden and tries very hard not to boggle at the state of their kitchen table. Dean loves him a little bit more.

 

***

 

“Can we go on holiday?” it’s fitting he asks now, when they are both the foam on the waves of their post-coital puddle.

 

He’s checked and they _can_ \- the commission he did for Bloomsbury Books last month is paying its way, and he’s waiting on a letter back from Aberforth that bodes well. ( _Royal Mail_ is slower than ow-). They could go on holiday. Seamus is owed some leave from work. Shit, both of them are owed something, even if they won’t put a name to it. He wants to go on holiday. He needs to go on holiday and they could they could they could.

 

It started raining halfway through dinner and they ran indoors and tore their clothes off and never finished dinner. That’s probably not healthy. Dean hadn't cared about anything but getting Seamus’ trousers off, getting his own off. Making sure nothing went near the table. The cold still lingers over Seamus’ flesh and makes Dean shiver right down to his toes and he curls tighter between the pale blue duvet and the dark blue bed sheets and the arms around him. Early sun is still pouring through the window and gives so many opportunities it leaves him nearly breathless. Seamus blinks once. Twice. Blows out a breath which Dean half expects to be made up of cigarette smoke even though Seamus doesn’t smoke indoors.

 

“Okay.”

 

Something in his heart unravels. “Yeah?”

 

“Yeah.Alright. I’ll ask tomorrow- when do you want to go?”

 

He holds him tighter, clutching at his elbows. “Soon.”

 

Without looking, Seamus reaches up and tangles his head in his hair. It’s a heavy, warm weight on the back of his head cradling him like it would hold him underwater.

 

It’s a comfort, and Dean’s man enough to know it shouldn’t be a comfort, broken enough to recognise that it is. Maybe, when all this is over, he can introduce the wizarding world to therapists. He thinks Seamus would get a laugh out of Freud-certainly Hermione would be incandescent with rage, Ron baffled. No- they’re not in Hogwarts- it _is_ all over- it’s all over and it still hurts- will it always-maybe- maybe- maybe it will never stop- it’s not going to stop- he’s in bed with his boyfriend and it’s under his skin- deep in his bones-curled in his heart- it will never end. With his exhale, Dean sinks into Seamus’ shoulder.

 

“Dean?”

 

“Mmm?”

 

“You alright?”

 

“I suppose.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Dean can’t understand what any of this means anymore. Can’t understand why counting mugs helps. Can’t understand how they survived any of this. Perhaps all this doesn’t mean anything.

 

“Do you remember the first time we said ‘I love you’?” Seamus asks slowly without looking at him.

 

Dean can’t remember the last time they said ‘I love you’. Objectively he knows that they _do_ , but he can’t remember the first time, the last time, any time, with the absolute pure clarity that he wants to give his lover. The snatchers continue to take a lot of things from him. Over and over and over, pounding rhythmically as if they’re the embodiment of--

 

_the sea the sea the sea_

\-- and he isn’t sure how much will be left when he can finally put them to rest.

 

“No.” Dean admits.

 

“Me neither.” Seamus confesses.

 

The silence that follows their whispered blossomings is unexpected. It takes them both a moment to realise what the other has said, then come to terms with it, then to mourn whatever it is that they have just lost as dirt on top of the coffin of their first ‘I love you’. (Dean will draw it later; thick lines of charcoal black as his skin. Heavy on the paper the same way Seamus’ hand still even now cradles the back of his head, freeing like a scream ripped from their lungs, silent in the way they had to learn to be. Once finished, there will be no white remaining, just heavy dark black and dissolving shades of grey and ghosts.)

 

With great tenderness, as if he has numerous bruises all over, Dean leans as close as he dares and kisses the top of Seamus’ head. He used to take advantage of their height difference and do so a lot, the same way he used to take advantage of the height difference between him and the few students who still took issue with who he found to love. It was a long time ago, he wants to tell himself, or for someone to tell him. All of it was a very long time ago. In their embrace, Seamus turns and returns his kiss with one to his collarbone. They are both too thin.

 

They have been forced to spend a year mourning one another and Dean Thomas refuses to have one more sad thought about his boyfriend and kisses him again and again until he tilts his head up and they can share each other’s lips. Underneath his hands is scarred but living flesh; shaking but enveloping limbs; they tried to take Seamus but did not, _could_ not. In two months they have re-built their lives, and it’s the sweetest ‘fuck you’ Dean has ever tasted.

 

They do not say ‘I love you’ before falling asleep, but it still feels like a victory.

 

***

 

VII.

 

_Thursday 12 th December 1996_

 

Although Dean holds no real prejudice for the Slytherins beyond what has been fostered inside these walls for a thousand years he can’t stand looking at their colours and the way their green brands Malfoy’s robes directly over his heart and he's glad the grass is withering and he can stamp over it and press the snow down compact over the ground until there's no colour left to its name. He’s never felt safer than being in bed with Seamus and the curtains drawn like a Christmas present still left unwrapped and huddled behind the a Christmas tree for safety Dean can’t understand his need for. _Why,_ he thinks _, is Christmas the only religious holiday the wizarding world celebrates?_

 

***

 

VIII.

 

_Tuesday 5 th May 1998_

_Dear Professor,_

_We got your owl. The answer is no. Me and Seamus won’t come back and complete our final year. No. It doesn’t mean a fucking thing if it’s mandatory, or a requirement, or a necessity. We are not coming back to Hogwarts ever again, end of. Don’t bother sending another owl- we won’t be here, we won’t receive it, we won’t care if we do. We are not completing our seventh year._

_From, Dean Thomas & Seamus Finnigan._

“What’s that?” Seamus asks, body throwing a shadow across the light coming from the staircase. “Dean?”

 

He flinches when the hand comes into contact with his shoulder. He longs when the hand pulls away. He nods at the letter he is scribbling on the back of, too caught up in his fury to let it die whilst searching for a new sheet. Tries not to look at the face in dire need of dittany and sleep in front of him as he slides it over for his- boyfriend? Lover?Friend? Mate? Mourner?- to read.

 

Seamus’ black eye is so bad he has to bring the parchment two inches away from his face to be able to read it, and the fingers of his left hand tremble so bad he sits on it instead of trying to stroke the owl perched on the arm of the sofa lest he hurts it. They have both had enough of pain., Dean thinks, and it’s the last coherent thought he has for the next ten minutes until he comes to sitting on the floor next to the sofa not knowing where he is and Seamus watching him from two feet away, peering over his knees as his hugs them to his chest as tight as his bruised ribs will allow. For a minute, he allows himself to feel his own agonies: a twisted ankle that has him hobbling and would have brought the Snatchers right down on top of him, bruises all up his back from falling down stone stairs; a constant headache brought on by a lack of sleep he doubts will be rectified any time in the foreseeable future, a tiredness he sometimes welcomes more than an embrace, a family he must soon go home and face. They’re at Seamus’ Mam’s house, Dean finally remembers. With the lurid pink sofa and the Mam who when Seamus can’t avoid avoids mentioning Dumbledore, Dad, Dean and death.

 

“We’re not going back there,” the words warp and slow as if he is hearing them from a great distance away with a great wind between them. Well, the air separates them true, but not a great distance- only two feet- only a year- only- only- only- they have to fix themselves and their lives, but that’s only two things.

 

“No,” Dean agrees as if nothing is at all wrong with the tableau set out on Seamus’ Mam’s living room carpet. “We’re not.”

 

Gingerly, Seamus gets to his feet, grasps Dean under his arms and hauls him up onto the sofa doing his best not to jostle Dean’s ankle and takes advantage of for once being the taller one and kisses his forehead. “Send that owl whilst I put the kettle on, will you? Mam’ll go mental if it shits on her settee.”

 

He does. It goes. It’s the last owl they ever see.

_***_

IX.

_Thursday 6 th August 1998_

 

Hermione Granger peers over her tea cup and asks, “How are you, Dean?”

 

Five- six- sev- unhappy about the interruption of counting tea cups, and trying not to let it show, he tries to look at her. “Fine. Better. How are _you_?”

 

“Not better.”

 

Guilt collides over him- of course he is doing fine- of course- he wasn’t the one on the run for a year- he wasn’t the one who helped Harry Potter defeat You-Know-Who and the death-eaters- of course he’s fine. She squints at his face and then scoffs, flinging her serviette down onto the grubby cafe table. “Don’t be stupid. It’s not your fault.”

 

“Still.”

 

She turns her face to the side. Breathe out in one long movement. It’s been a while since Dean’s talked to anyone but Seamus, let alone a girl, let alone _Hermione Granger youngest deputy minister in wizarding history_. He doesn’t know what it is she wants from him- he doesn’t think he has anything left to give. But she asked him to come to this run-down dog-eared muggle cafe tucked away in the grey expanse of London too close to where he grew up with hungry, looming beasts pressing too close, and he came here.

_Why?_

 

There can’t be any harm in asking. “Hermione. Why did you ask me to come here?” The words are foreign in his mouth, heavy on his tongue; clunky and out of place. Pebbles to place on his grave. He’s going to rest. One interpretation or another. The tea cup chinks as she picks it up, not to drink but to just stare into. Well, why shouldn’t a teacup hold answers? The world’s gone strange enough anyway, and Professor Trel- Dean puts his head in his hands. Tiredness dries his eyes dry as a desert. Parches his mind until he can’t think about anything but how tired he is. It’s all he’s been thinking of since he was allowed to start thinking again three months ago.

 

There was a time all he could think about was Seamus.

 

“Hermione. Hermione. You’re the cleverest person I know. Please- please- please tell me you have the answers for this.”

 

So clever she didn’t even have to go back to school either, she’s the brightest witch of her age. She’ll know the answer to this. Has to. This is the woman who gave Professor Trelawney the biggest ‘fuck you’, trapped Rita Skeeter in a jar, founded the DA and scarred Marietta Edgecomb for life. She’s had to hold on for dear life since such a young age that she turned round and started to mould the world to her will instead. There’s no way she hasn’t looked at all their collective problems with an aloof glare and an upturned nose and turned it into an exam paper and got a huge fucking A+ on it.

 

“No,” she murmurs, eyes shining. “I don’t.”

 

Claws seizes the back of his tongue he can’t breathe horror sweeps him away in a tsunami until he can hardly breathe his eyes slide listlessly up over her head past her eyes to the counter behind her and above the waitress’ head to the tea cups hanging in a line on the wall four five six seven eight, nine, ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.

 

“But.” He says with the first breathe he catches as he treads water the same way he did when his mother finally took them to the new swimming pool. “But you’re Hermione Granger.”

 

“Yes.” Her voice is cold and snaps his eyes over to her like a wolf closing its mouth. “My job isn’t fixing everyone’s problems, or pulling everyone else’s weight. I am Hermione fucking Granger and I deserve better than this.”

 

 _Oh_ , he reaches for her hand softly. She snatches it away.

 

“I don’t want your pity and I don’t need your help,” Hermione warns him, cold and dangerous black ice water. “I asked you here for your opinion. Are we clear?”

 

“We’re clear.”

 

What would she have done, had he said ‘no’?

 

She wouldn’t explain it to him as if it’s a particularly tricky charm he is struggling to understand. She wouldn’t accept any apology however immediate. She would leave.

 

For all he didn’t want to come here, Dean doesn’t want her to leave.

 

She _does_ breathe out, staying solid as a skeleton- she’s slimmer, too, bones shadowing her skin like a faithful dog its master. Thank God for the skin they share, letting the circles under their eyes vanish like tears in the rain.

 

There’s a lull in their conversation and it reminds Dean terribly how they are teenagers still, designed to be awkward like newborn colts, expected to go back to school after fighting a war as if it was nothing. “Have you noticed,” he begins slowly, “this world doesn’t take danger very seriously?”

 

She taps her fingernail on her cup once. “Yes,” she replies. “I have.”

 

“Do you know why?” he’s trying to be as neutral as he can here- she’s upset- anyone would be upset- this isn’t just about the war- didn’t Seamus mention her and Ron are fighting?- he can’t remember- he’s not listening- she knows- she starts again.

 

“We have health and safety, in our- in the muggle world. We have rules and regulations to protect people, but all that’s regulated in our world is prophecies and books. It makes _sense_ , because this whole culture is based around _morals_! Because it’s not as materialistic as the muggle world- how can it be, when you can wave your wand and get whatever you need? Because we don’t have any need to work in such centralised organisations and companies- although there are some exceptions, of course, and it doesn’t mean everyone is rich- it’s more a difference in actual base assets because wizards have a smaller gene pool then the lines of inheritance are more linear, so they will nearly always have land or at least a house.

 

“Muggle-borns when they graduate will expand territory by buying their own families assets and so we never have a shortage. The whole world is sort of a combination between the old muggle aristocracy they split from, with some materialism thrown in because logically that’s always going to be both a sign of wealth and the easiest thing that will be passed along from the muggle world, but the whole mindset is more like the medieval times and _that’s_ why there’s no worry about child accidents or psychologists. Partly because we split off from the muggle world and are still so prejudiced about integrating their ideas- you’ve heard how Mr Weasley’s been treated all these years. But also because when you can heal a fatal cut in seconds, the idea of prolonged trauma is forgotten; it’s been that way for so long that the whole culture has changed around it, Dean! Do you have any idea how _huge_ that is? Wizards now just shrug at the idea of a fatal injury because they have solutions for just about everything!”

 

She sits back, exhausted and triumph; she’s won the battle in her head and she’s so damn proud of herself. Dean hates that all he can think to say is, “Oh.”

 

“Yes.”

 

There was a pause. “How _are_ you, Dean?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“Me neither.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“No.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“I think I’m- how do you tell if- the nights are the worse, you know?” he blurted out. “Even if you manage to fall asleep, you wake up again and it hasn’t been long enough and you still have to wait for morning to come.”

 

She shrugged. “I try to read- there’s an awful lot I need to read if I want to catch up on all that I missed last year.” She runs a hand through her hair.

 

“Hermione can you honestly tell me you haven’t already all the required reading for seventh year back in fourth year?”

 

“Well... no. No, I suppose I can’t. Why do you ask?”

 

“Because, just- you read. A lot.” At her raised eyebrow, he quickly carries on. “I mean, you _always_ did, but, you- _you just pretended you weren’t as smart as you are_ , what the fuck is wrong with you?”

 

He’s shouting, he's standing, Hermione sips her tea and says, “The muggles are staring now.” He sits down with a thump and a heavy blush.

 

“What’s a muggle?” asks a passer-by on his way out- he’s got a shell suit half off and tied round his waist, and one of those shirts that change colour with your mood and it’s not a good look; Dean is thankful he’s a mud blood because after a year as a ghost he doesn’t think he’d cope well with being stared at if he didn’t pass as a muggle- why _don’t_ more wizards pass as muggles when the clothing is nothing short of horrendous, anyway- mud blood, half blood, pure blood, like they’re _animals_ for God’s sake.

 

“Someone who’s not magic,” Dean responds automatically.

 

It breaks the spell- everyone turns away.

 

It clicks twenty seconds into their renewed silence. “They probably think ‘muggle’ is some sort of hippie slang.”

 

Hermione begins to laugh and he feels a smile spread and stretch over his face like waking up from a deep dark sleep. When it dies down, she is wiping tears away from her eyes. “Oh dear, I needed that,” she wheezes, the ghosts of wars past flitting around her shoulders and pulling her smile wider with their bony fingers. (Dean draws that, much later. It’s grossly caricatured and haunting and he is glad to sell it to a seven foot two blue-suited eccentric whose pale face shines down over him like the moon.)

 

“I’m glad,” Dean replies and carefully, gradually, gently reaches over the table and takes hold of her hand. It’s cold as black ice and she holds his fingers tight enough to creak his bones. _Snap them, I wouldn’t mind._

 

His fingers remain intact. “Are you?”

 

“Yeah, you look nice happy.”

 

The words bring a soft smile to her face. He wonders how many times she has been given the chance to smile that smile. “You’re right,” she murmurs quietly, eyes drifting away somewhere above his head and out of the room. “About some of the things you said, at least.”

 

“It’s been known to happen.”

 

“I don’t know why, but I keep finding myself pretending. Even at work- I’ve become just like all the muggle women, asking if I can ‘just have a word’, saying ‘sorry’, saying ‘excuse me’. I’ve never done that before.”

 

“Did you start during..?”

 

A snort. “No.”

 

“Why have you started…”

 

“I don’t know.” She frowns and twists her neck downwards. “No. I _do_ know. You think I had to analyse how I felt for years and learnt nothing?”

 

“No.”

 

“Good. But… oh, I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. You couldn’t possibly care- you were right, I should never have asked you here. It’s not fair on you.”

 

“I’m here, aren’t I? Tell me, ‘cuz Hermione- I mean this nicely, but I don’t think you’re going to tell anyone if you don’t tell me.”

 

“It’s just- being on the run, you had to _not be seen_. And now I can’t even go to the bathroom without someone recognising me- not just at the ministry, either. Does that ever annoy you, Dean? Being recognised only for that?”

 

“I don’t go out enough to be recognised."

 

"No. no one recognizes Seamus at work either, in case you’re worrying. But now people recognise me, and I don’t want it.”

 

“But… all those times you put your hand up in class- _every_ time, in face- even when Snape was an absolute bastard to you.”

 

“I don’t care- I don’t care!” she yanks her hand away and forces her bawling inwards the way people like them have to. “I don’t want to be recognised, and I shouldn’t have to explain it to anyone! But people act as if it’s something dirty to want some peace and quiet, to be a girl who doesn’t want to be dragged away from more learning for some praise- I don’t care!”

 

“That’s what I always liked about you.”

 

Her tirade halts on the cliff edge and her eyes squint that way they do when she’s suspicious, “Really?”

 

“Really,” Dean confirms, shifting in his seat. How long have they been here, anyway? His tea has been cold for the past hour. “But... when you’re good, Hermione, they want you to be a role-model. Especially in the muggle world, they always want to have positive black women in the media. And- after seven years of being called ‘miss know it all’ it can’t be that bad, surely?”

 

“Eighteen.”

 

“What?”

 

“Eighteen years.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Why didn’t you go back to school, Hermione?”

 

“I couldn’t,” Hermione looks away, ashamed. “Do you remember anything about primary school?”

 

“I guess.”

 

“I was- the other- “

 

“Hermione,” his voice sounds tender in a way he didn’t know it could be anymore, “it’s alright. You don’t have to say it.”

 

There is such an enormous amount of gratitude in her it hurts him. “Thank you. Yes, well. It was better, at Hogwarts- not, not completely, but, but more, and except from Snape the teachers didn’t join in like… and people liked me- not just Harry and Ron, but _girls_. No one ever liked me before. It was so good there, it was all so good, and then they ruined it! They took that from me, and now I can’t even go back to do my last year, and- and- I can’t _stand_ people recognising me anymore. I can’t stand it, it’s too much like it was, and it’s not enough all at the same time and I tried to re-do some of my old notes, the other day and my hands shook and they were all so messy no matter what I did I couldn’t even spell them neat.”

 

Dean silently passes her a tissue.

 

“And- there’s another reason I asked you here, the real reason. But you don’t have to answer.”

 

“It’s okay.”

 

“How did you tell your family you were safe again?”

 

“There was- Mum cried. And my step-dad too, that part- that part was the worse. How did it go when you went back to see yours?”

 

“No one’s told you?” how long has it been since her eyes have been wide in something other than fear or horror? “I wiped their memories at the start of seventh year. They’re living in Australia, thinking their Mr and Mrs Wilkins married for thirty years and still trying for a baby.”

 

“Can you undo it?”

 

“I don’t know if I should. That’s what I want your help with.”

 

“Why shouldn’t you?”

 

“What if they broke up for some reason? What if I fix it and then they remember they broke up and then they broke up again? What if they hate me for wiping their memories? What will they tell their neighbours when they come back? They sold their house to go to Australia; they can’t just go back to normal if I undo the spell. It just seems like more people that will be hurt from this war when they don’t have to be.”

 

“Do you need them back?”

 

“Yes, but…”

 

“What is it?”

 

“What if they’re happier without a daughter?”

 

“Oh, Hermione, _no-_ “

 

“No! You don’t- you don’t _know_ , Dean! I was a horrible child before Hogwarts- I was too clever and I asked silly things and I wouldn’t let Mum brush my hair or sit on Dad’s knee and I didn’t want to be a dentist and I never got invited to any parties and I never had friends over or did anything but read and read and read. Sometimes, sometimes-“ her voice cracks wetly –“when I first started Hogwarts I would pretend I had been invited to sleep overs and had made lots of friends and everyone liked me and then later I would tell them just about Harry and Ron and they would ask me what happened to all the other friends I had told them about.”

 

“Oh God, I’m so sorry.”

 

“Stop it. Don’t be. It’s not your fault.”

 

“ _Still_.”

 

“What do you think I should do?”

 

The world really has been destroyed, Dean thinks. This is what the death eaters have done. Nothing is ever going to be right again.

 

“I don’t know, Hermione. I’m so sorry, but I don’t know. If they’re good parents, then they won’t care what you’ve done, they’ll just take care of you and want you to be alright. But they’re _parents_ , they might not understand, not the way your friends understand why you did it and why they should forgive you. It’s- for the right reasons, obviously, but you completely took their minds away from them.”

 

“I know. I know, I know, I thought about it a lot after I first did it. It makes me no better than all of them, playing at God because I think I know best- after all you didn’t do it to your family.”

 

“I thought about it,” he lies. It comes easier than breathing has been for the past three months. “And I think, I think you deserve your parents back, and you deserve however easier it makes your life, and Harry and Ron deserve however easier it’ll make their lives because you won’t only have them. If it goes wrong, just… obliviate them again. They can go back to their lives in Australia and you- well, we’ll get you a dog, I suppose.”

 

There is snot and tears mixed in with her laughter, but it is good to see her smile.

 

She disappears into the bathroom for five minutes to clean her face and Dean goes up to the counter and orders them both tea and chocolate cake to at least stop the waitress glaring at them for being there too long.

 

 

 

“It’s hard to believe I’m going to be nineteen soon,” Hermione says when half her slice is gone. The cake is good- rich and sweet and skin-coloured and good for devouring and soaking up salt water. He can’t remember the last time he had cake, but he’s in a good enough mood that this is less of a funeral for the last time and more a celebration that at least cake has not been ruined for him. so busy savouring the taste he only gives a noncommittal hum in response.

 

“It’s going to be 2000 soon. A whole new millennium.”

 

“Yeah,” he chokes out. Then decides a tearful confession deserves at least a confession in kind. “I want to get better before then.”

 

An eyebrow is raised as she licks her spoon, “Oh?”

 

“A whole new start.”

 

Her face brightens in understanding like the sun has come out from behind the clouds. “Oh. Yes. Me too. It’s- it’s _exciting_ , really. After all that’s happened in the last century for both wizards and muggles. To think there are babies being born _right now_ who won’t remember anything about this century. And in eighteen months babies will be born who the 20th century hasn’t touched at all.”

 

It’s… a good thought, it brings a nice feeling. “A whole new world,” Dean says with a smile he means.

 

“I mean, things are already getting better, aren’t they? We’ve- we’ve survived, and students will be starting at Hogwarts in September, and Harry won. Ron has been doing so much better lately, and lots of places have already been rebuilt and- and- and- Seamus managed to put the protective charms up around your house without blowing anything up and I’ve talked to you and we’ve helped each other and- and-“

 

“And you’re the youngest deputy minister of magic in history?”

 

“Yes,” Hermione agrees breathlessly. “There is that.”

 

“That’s good,” he puts his spoon down. “Listen, Hermione, I should have told you ages ago, but- I’m- _we’re_ proud of you. For your job. For helping Harry. For- for everything. Thank you.”

 

His words bring such a smile to her face that he is so glad he came. It softens into something tender, but does not dim. She reaches across and interlinks their hands again. “It’s not all bad, Dean, is it? There are good things still alive, too.”

 

“Lots of good things,” and he deliberately does not think about how he feels as he says it, because if he does it won’t match up with the happiness he is meant to feel and the joy he clearly lacks.

 

***

 

“Hermione told me you’ve put spells on the house.” He doesn’t realise how angry he is until the words leave his mouth like spitting blood.

 

Seamus blinks, steps away from the stove. “Of course I did.”

 

Dean feels the anger grow and open its jaw wide. “What the fuck for?!”

 

“For protection”

 

“Protection from what? What part of ‘no magic, Seamus’ didn’t you understand!”

 

“The part where you were stupid enough to believe there were no more death eaters anywhere! The part where you were stupid enough to believe none of them would try to come after you! The part where you were stupid enough to believe none of them would try to come after _me_! I spent a year fighting the Carrows, and if you haven’t been too deep under your rock for the last three months you might remember me telling you that they escaped from Ravenclaw Tower during the battle and none of the aurors have been able to find them since!”

 

“You didn’t tell me that.” Whatever else his brain has let him down on in recent times, Dean will always listen to Seamus.

 

“Never fucking mind what I told you! A death eater was caught near Luna’s house before, and two near Hogwarts! So I’m sorry if the protection charms interfere with your fucking trauma, but I figured it was better that than have you die because a death eater got off a couple of killing curses while you tried to remember where you put your wand!”

 

They both roar insults that Dean doesn’t listen to, until he storms off upstairs and Seamus off into the garden. Both to cry, one to chain smoke, neither to say a word but just mumble what could be apologies when Seamus finally comes up and crawls under the covers. In the morning, they don’t talk about it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for those who haven't read the prequel 'does it trouble your mind the way you trouble mine?', the basic premise is over Christmas in fifth year seamus started taking a set of one-a-day potions that were meant to stop him being gay

X.

 

_Sunday 28 th January 1996_

Frost is seeping up the insides of the windows when Dean wakes up with someone lying next to him in bed. The first thing that comes to mind is sex, then drinking, then hangovers, and it takes him a few seconds to remember that he has experience of exactly none of these things. Then who-? Seamus. He’s sleeping with- next to- beside- _in the same bed as_ his best mate, and it’s what he’s been wanting for ages and Seamus likes me back! He likes me back! He likes me back! He likes me back! He likes me back! He likes me back! I have a boyfriend! Seamus is my boyfriend! Seamus is my boyfriend! Seamus is my boyfriend! Seamus is my boyfriend! Seamus is my boyfriend! Seamus is my boyfriend! Seamus is my boyfriend! Seamus is my boyfriend! Seamus is my boyfriend! Seamus is my boyfriend! Seamus is my boyfriend! Seamus is my boyfriend! Seamus is my boyfriend! Seamus is my boyfriend! Seamus is my boyfriend! Seamus is my boyfriend! Seamus is my boyfriend! Seamus is m—oving, stirring, blinking himself awake and up out of the wretched slumber Dean finally managed to coax him in to at four in the morning. What time is it, anyway?

With a groan he shoves his elbow underneath him and brings his head up to look. Six thirty am. He’s slept for two hours, how in Merlin’s name is he awake? How, _how_?!

A great clap of thunder rolls out over the dorm, followed by a restful, whistling breeze. Dean curses internally- Ron’s snoring could wake the dead- and drops his head back onto the pillow with a sigh.

“Dean?”

He curses aloud.

“Dean?”

“What is it?” it’s too early to be forming words. Sighing out his frustrations, Dean comes to terms with the fact he isn’t going back to sleep today and looks over at Seamus. (His boyfriendhis boyfriendhis boyfriendhis boyfriendhis boyfriend.) The other boy looks bleary and wretched: eyes skittering from one focus point to another as he tries to make sense of his surroundings, the grey winter sunrise washing away more and more of him as the day breaks further, where his slim fingers grasp Dean’s shirt they are trembling and he can count every bone. Dean has to close his eyes and turn away until he can think about something else. “Do you remember anything about last night?”

“Last night? What- oh. _Oh._ ”

There is a vulnerability in Seamus that he has never seen before but thinks it has always been there and that’s the hardest part of all this- the idea that a collapse might have been inevitable. “How much do you remember?” _Does it include an answer to why you’re in my bed?_

“I told you I loved you.” There is a pause. Dean feels his hope or his heart drop down to the bottom of his ribcage and wishes to drown.

Seamus moves closer. Warmth spreads all up Dean’s side where the two of them touch. “I meant it.”

One little wheeze sets Dean’s heart on an even keel again. 

“Yeah?”

 

“Of course I did.”

 

And Dean, of all things, starts giggling. He doesn’t think it’s the best thing he should do, or what any normal person in this situation would do, but he can’t help it. Relief rushes over him and floats it up out of his heart and spinning out of throat to burble like a stream into the thin air around them, high notes likes wind chimes.

 

He’s the happiest he’s ever been—he has a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend! This happy feeling is going to last forever- the rest of his life is goigng to be spent with his head swimming in a golden bubble.

 

Even just a tiny giggle makes Seamus cough like his lungs are on fire. Deep, crackling coughs with the sea in his lungs and his chest is packed full of tinfoil.

 

“Alright,” Dean hastily pulls him closer and helps as he struggles to sit up as he coughs and coughs and coughs and coughs and Dean considers it a victory that it doesn’t turn to heaving and loathes how little victory has come to mean that this is a _good_ thing and- this is all his fault, isn’t it? Why didn’t he notice sooner? Why didn’t he push it every time the wrongness of his best mate screamed in his face?  Why is he going to carry on and let Seamus shove everything wrong into the closet he’s been hiding in and pretend to everyone else but him that he’s fine?

 

“God, Shay,”” he whispers, so low he’s not entirely sure if he can be heard over the sounds of his boyfriend straining to remove his lungs from his ribcage. “How could you do this to yourself?”

 

“Needed-“ Dean shushes him until the coughing stops. He slumps back with his eyes closed and so exhausted Dean thinks he won’t carry on. “Me Mam, Dean- she would- haven’t you ever felt like...” his feelings are lost in retching- trying to rid himself off the poison in him- which is irony dark as death eaters- that’s been the problem all along and it kills him that it could have been avoided if only one tiny thought never entered Seamus’ mind. If only he had come to a different solution. If he hadn’t taken one look at a problem and immediately come to the conclusion that he was the broken one and he needed fixing.

 

Dean isn’t stupid. The both of them have plenty enough problems, more than enough issues, their fair share of wounds but surely, surely, surely this could have been the one thing that stayed a muggle prejudice and existed far away from their world. He doesn’t think he is asking for a lot. He doesn’t understand what undercurrent taints the rest of the world’s natural order enough to turn every single twist of life towards ruin. He fears the day he does. He holds Seamus close with one hand and casts a silencing spell over his bed with the other.

“Haven’t you ever- oh, God, Dean- what if someone hears- last night what if-“

“They won’t have- I did a silencing spell- calm down, now- shush-“

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay.” For some reason, the trust Seamus has for him makes his heart twist and twist and hurt. Maybe it’s because the idiot hasn’t trusted him all this time, but he’s not focusing on his own complicated feelings now when _his boyfriend_ has as good as overdosed not even twelve hours ago, and- right, he should probably take him to the hospital wing, shouldn’t he?

When he asks, the question lands like a heavy blow and leaves Seamus skittering in fear; wide-eyed and dreading the fall of an axe only he can see. Dean hates himself. “No- no- I can’t I can’t I can’t- don’t make me, please, please- you can’t make me, I won’t go.”

“Why not?”

Madame Pomfrey can give him something to make him better and then they can have the rest of the weekend together and then they can be happy together.

“She’ll ask _why_ , Dean, and I’ll have to tell her and then she’ll know and everyone will know.”

“Then they’ll know you love me.”

“Then they’ll know I’m gay!”

“It doesn’t matter!” frustration is boiling up through his knuckles clenched so hard they’re turning white, seeping up through his ribs like lava from dark blackened ground- he thinks the lava might be his heart, or that the lava has taken his heart away from him, and he doesn’t mind either option, so long as he can make Seamus _see_. “It doesn’t fucking matter if you’re gay, Seamus! It doesn’t fucking matter!”

“Yes it does!” he tears away and balls his fists and kneels across from him angry and bird-boned with sharp little hunched shoulder bones and struggling to stay upright as the mattress keeps moving under their weight. “Of course it fucking matters, you idiot!”

“Explain it to me, then, if I’m so stupid I’m missing the obvious. Tell me: Why. The. Fuck. Does. It. Matter?”

“Because it’s _wrong_!”

“I’m wrong then!” he snatches Seamus’ shoulders and drags them so their faces are only an inch apart. “I like boys just as much as girls and I love you and I’m all fucking wrong- tell me that! In fact- tell me where to get some more of that bloody fucking potion so I can take it too!”

Blue eyes glint. “Don’t you fucking dare-“

“Why not!”

“You’re not wrong- you’re- you could never be-“

“What?” he shakes him hard. “Tell me!”

“I felt-“ something passes over his face. Less than a cloud, worse than a shadow. “You’re _not_ how I feel, Dean, you’re not, you’re not... You’re... you’re too _good_ to be how fucking disgusting I feel.”

“And if I did?”

Resolve sharpens his expressions. He tilts his head up. “You don’t. You won’t. I won’t let you.”

Dean tilts forward on his knees and kisses him soundly.

They pull away desperate to breathe. He doesn’t think that’s just the kiss.

“Did that feel wrong?” he murmurs, so close his mouth brushes Seamus’.

“Never.” He answers eyes half-closed and twinkling little half-moons. “You could never feel wrong. But, God, Dean, haven’t you ever felt-?”

“I’ve never wanted to stop loving you.”

 

The words stop him dead. Dean feels his own body freeze. Then, slowly, Seamus smiles. Dean’s been sad and angry and scared and alone and missing him for a long time. He kisses him again, again againagainagain.

 

***

 

After their frantic tumblings this morning, Seamus has been asleep for twelve hours. The evening light has diminished and Dean has been inching closer and closer to the window without noticing it as he tries to carry on seeing the sketchbook underneath his hands. Eventually, he gives it up for a lost cause and stretches out his screaming back and twists the claw shapes from his fingers. Looking down at the page, he is horrified and fascinated by what has come from his mind. A great big black tree grows over a river of evil and in front of that and in front of everything is an angel- not the sickly sweet smile cloying angels fit for Nativity, but a true angel: monstrous. A huge tall girl with deer antlers and a bloody nose and vacant blind eyes that see everything. The blood drips onto her naked body and runs in thick rivulets down to where her chest has been ripped wide open; skin peeled off and ribs jagged and cracked over a mummified heart that doesn’t beat. Soon, the river is going to fill up all the spaces between her bones and float her heart away whilst she watches. Just her head above the water, coolly observing it wash away, the trail of blood connecting the two of them growing fainter and fainter. _It all goes back_ , Dean realises. _Seamus thinks he’s wrong because his Mam said so. She thinks it’s wrong because someone told her so. Misery is passed down right from the beginning._ If anyone ever looks back the whole way, Dean has no doubts that it will have started right inside the tree. Spread by the river in a harsh thick black line that can be traced through everything without breaking. It’s a horrendous idea.

 

And yet... Dean understands running. He understands the misery. He understands it, in a way he can’t articulate even during the times when he admits to it, because to do so would be the antithesis of everything around you, _but_.... sometimes fighting gets too hard. Sometimes life is too hard. Sometimes you want to turn around to whatever is destroying you and open your arms.

 

If you did that, what would happen next?

 

Dean likes to imagine that the river takes him out to the sea and lets him float in peace, completely filled with what, never empty again, never longing for anything again. He leans back against the bed. Seamus’ hand dangles an inch from his cheek; outstretched as if even dreaming he is reaching out to cup his face and smile up at him. Dean thinks on how happy he felt last night. How sad. How happy because  Seamus loves him Seamus loves him Seamus loves him Seamus loves him Seamus loves him Seamus loves him Seamus loves him Seamus loves him Seamus loves him Seamus loves him Seamus loves him Seamus loves him Seamus loves him Seamus loves him Seamus loves him Seamus loves him Seamus loves him Seamus loves him Seamus loves him Seamus loves him Seamus loves him back. It is worth all of the past month for that knowledge. He doesn’t know if it is worth the same to Seamus. He doesn’t want Seamus to ever, ever fucking do that again. If he knew in December that torture was the only path to the pure, unadulterated joy of today, would he have taken it?

 

No.

 

Seamus did.

 

_And look at him now!_

 

Dean doesn’t look. It’s- he can’t reconcile his best friend (his boyfriend his boyfriend his boyfriend his boyfriend) to the boy on the bed. The green vials. The potion he poured down the toilet before more of it got into his veins. There must be sense to be made of all this, but he is not the man for the job. He, who cannot get Seamus to go to the hospital wing, who cannot convince his boyfriend that there is no shame in his existence, who cannot work out how to fix this. This is nothing like how he thought his teenage years would be. He didn’t realise his first kiss was going to taste of his boyfriend’s tears.

 

Before he knows quite what it is he’s doing, Dean is on his knees and shaking the other boy awake. “Seamus,” he hisses frantically, trying and failing to keep his voice to a whisper in case any of the others come in unexpectedly. “Seamus!”

 

“Mmm- Dean, what? ‘S wrong?”

 

“Are we boyfriends?”

 

Sleep is still hovering over him like a cloud. “Wha....”

 

“Are we boyfriends?” he repeats, feeling silly.

 

“Of course we are!”

 

Then why is doubt still gnawing at him? “Really?”

 

“Well, unless..you... don’t want to be?”

 

“No. No, I want to be.” Seeing the fearful confusion on Seamus’ face, and realising he’s still feverish with the bloody fucking potion, Dean clambers up onto the bed and slips under the covers next to him.

 

“What are you- oh, hell, Dean, _no_ , the curtains- shut the curtains, what if someone sees?”

 

“Would it be so bad if they did?” but he magics them shut with a whisper anyway. There is little he wouldn’t do for the boy in his bed and it should scare him more than it does.

 

“Yes!”

 

“Why?”

 

“I don’t _know_!”

 

Dean thinks he’s laughing until he tastes salt water on his tongue.

“Dean! Dean, hey- shush- don’t cry- come here, come here, it’s alright- it’s alright now, it’s alright.”

 

From underneath the waves and smothering, Dean hears him asking what’s wrong and _why’re you crying_ and sobs more because he hasn’t got an answer and sobs because he has the silliest, stupidest reason of all time and it’s embarrassing and stupid. It’s stupid stupidstupid- he has a boyfriend- a boyfriend- and he’s crying just because reality doesn’t match up to his hopes- he should be used to this- he’s had to pull himself back all his life lest he be mistaken for a shadow or an unwelcome being- he’s had to keep his hood down even when it’s been raining for fear the wrong person would be twitching their curtains looking out the window. This shouldn’t be making him cry like a baby, but it is, and Seamus rocks him to sleep.

 

***

 

When he wakes up, it is Monday and they have to go to lessons and it’s an uphill battle Dean revels in because this, _this_ he understands.

 

At the back of History of Magic he tries to recall all that he thought his teenage years would be: happy and shining golden yellow, lots of friends, parties and excitement and sports and falling in love and the best time of his life with his best friend. That should have tipped him off then, he thinks, hastily biting back a laugh before he turns every head in the room towards him. (Would Binns even notice? Part of him wants to try just to see.) Seamus lists against him nearly as pale as their professor, and Dean can’t look at him.

 

Reality is a cruel, cruel mistress, yet he has never been happier than when he realised Seamus loves him back and surely, surely, he isn’t the sort of person who would ignore the fact  his best friend has just put himself through fucking conversion therapy to focus on how his feelings weren’t actually unrequited after all?

 

He doubts even Hermione has the answer to that one.

 

But here they are. Here he is. His mother didn’t swallow her own blood to let him eat so that he could grow into his father’s shoes.  Didn't scrub hours of her life away cleaning whilst old men leered about what else she could do on her knees for them so her first born could be the sort of man that ran away from his problems. Didn’t do it, neither, so he could waste the future he has been given not studying and paying attention in class, but this is the wizarding world and you don’t need OWLS the way you need GCSEs. You need the right blood and it isn’t about colour but it’s still the _same._

 

When Professor McGonagall came and took tea in their crowded London flat and told them Dean had magic in his blood and no further need of the rough, shoddy secondary school they had been looking for second-hand uniforms for, Mum had cried. She hadn’t said why, but Dean knows it’s because his future of pain had been magically wiped clean and changed to an existence where he wasn’t condemned. They hadn’t been happy tears. And that was why he hadn’t written to her the first time he heard the word ‘mudblood’ and sent a clipping of Leta Lestrange out of the _Daily Prophet_ the next time her photo was in it.

 

If there is a reason why Dean still hasn’t told his family a war is coming, he hasn’t found it yet.

 

He blinks and instead of the title on his parchment he has written ‘so here we are’. Yes. A war is coming and they are relying on a fifteen year old to teach them to fight the Dark Lord. He has never not once gotten drunk or laid and he didn’t have a sexuality crisis and he’s as good as muggle born and his best friend didn’t trust him with a huge secret and tried to stop being gay and when it all came out he had overdosed and the aftermath smelt of vomit and he found Lavender having a panic attack last month because of exams and that part is no different from London and no one socialises with other houses even when they’re not from Slytherin and the first time he said ‘I love you’ to anyone was when he had just had to chuck the potions his best friend now boyfriend had been taking to try and stop being gay down the toilet and he can’t hold his boyfriend’s hand in public and he still doesn’t know if his boyfriend is going to be alright and he doesn’t know when the war is going to start.

 

It is a big world he has found himself in. Dean did not actually realise how much of his hope he still passes through a filter until now.

 

Naked hope is a tremulous thing.

 

He looks and in place of an overview of why North American magic more closely resembles muggle stories than actual rituals of the ancient tribes he has drawn a messy skeleton in a smattering of thin black scratches, looking all the more bare for the flesh-colour the parchment gives to its bones. A naked figure submerged up to its ankles and no face. For a second he wonders if Seamus can understand, then looks and sees he is asleep on his shoulder. The image is all Dean has ever wanted. (He has a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend!)

 

The image is part of a lesson Hogwarts more like as not never intended to teach him. Tired people look tired. There is no soft lilac birds flying, or gentle wisps of flyaway hair fragile as spun gold and Icarus. Just deep sunken groves where the giant has cupped the wearer’s face in his hands and gouged at them with his thumbs and just barely missed their eyes.

 

Tired people look tired.

 

He fears what else the giant has taken. What more he is going to take. What he has taken from _Dean_.

 

***

 

XI.

_Wednesday 31 st July 1996_

 A boy dies two weeks before Dean comes back from school for the summer and when his Mum goes to the funeral, he and his half sisters open all the windows in the flat to air out the grief in the hope when she comes back she’ll have stopped thinking the dead thing’s name already. Dean can’t remember if their family were friends with the boy or if this is just another mourning for one coloured like them being lowered into blacker earth.

 

The pages of his sketchbook that night tower high with charcoal trees. In the middle he leaves a space for the angel. When he draws her next, fairy lights are strung over her antlers and making stars in the darkness.

 

***

 

XII.

 

_Monday 19 th August 1996_

 

Seamus?

 

Yeah?

 

I love you.

 

I love you, too. What’s wrong?

 

I don’t know.

 

Liar.

 

Just- you won’t like it.

 

Okay.

 

Are we going to be a proper couple when we go back to school?

 

And ‘proper’ means...

 

You know. Public.

 

.......

 

We don’t _have_ to. If it’s going to upset you. Just, I thought....

 

You want to.

 

I want you to be happy and comfortable.

 

You want me to be happy _and_ out.

 

Yeah.

 

Mmmm.... maybe.

 

Is it... are you ashamed of me?

 

No!

 

Then _why_ \- we’ve talked about this, haven’t we? And- I mean, I know it’s not all fixed or anything, but....

 

No- it’s, it’s not you. I’m just... worried.

 

About what?

 

Things.

 

Okay.

 

If everyone else- we’ll have to be a couple around everyone else and... you won’t like this.

 

Tell me.

 

You’re... I love you and when you’re happy and I ... sometimes I just want _you_ , you know? I like- I like- I like- oh, for fuck’s sake!

 

Seamus, it’s _fine_. I won’t get mad.

 

Promise?

 

Pinkie promise.

 

Well. I just. I just. _Idon’twantotherpeopletoseeyouwhenyou’resohappylikethat_ , see I _told_ you it was horrible- I told you-

 

No. Wait. Don’t go. I- I know.

 

Know what?

 

What you mean.

 

I, uh, I know what you mean. ‘S why it’s taken me so long to ask.

 

...How did you get over it?

 

I haven’t.

 

Oh.

 

....

 

Do you think we’re doing all of this right?

 

Huh?

 

Dating.

 

Oh. I don’t know. I mean... maybe.

 

For- for what it’s worth, I, uh, I mean- this is the _only_ reason I don’t want everyone else to know, if that helps.

 

It.... yeah, actually. It helps. Thanks.

 

Pfft. What’re you thanking me for? Not being fucked up for once?

 

For helping.

 

Pfft.

 

No, honestly. It’s... nice, when we talk to each other. I like- I like it when you trust me with these things.

 

Pfft.

 

Stop scoffing- c’mere.

 

Oi!

 

Oh, hush, you.

 

Don’t you shush me- oh- ohhhh- kiss me again.

 

...

 

...

 

...

 

We’re going to have to go back soon. It’s about time for tea. Your Mam will be worrying.

 

Not yet.

 

Soon, though. You promised Daisy you’d tell her the story about the dragons again before bedtime.

 

I know, I will, just... in a minute.

 

Ah, ‘m not complaining with such a comfy pillow.

 

Behave.

 

Oh, no, he’s- yes, I think you are, you’re smiling! See, you like it just as much as I do!

 

Alright, alright! I do, I give in, but stop tickling me!

 

Spoil sport.

 

Tosser.

 

Arsehole.

 

Prick.

 

Mmm, God I love you.

 

I love you too.

 

 

(Dean falls asleep that night with a smile on his face like the one his Mum wore when they came to dinner holding hands.)

 

***

 

XIII.

 

_Sunday 28 th January 1996_

 

“There we are,” Dean lowers his friend onto his bed, pulls the duvet round his shoulders. Still shaking and pale. “D’you want a drink?” the blonde shakes his head. Or maybe he nods. Dean fills a mug with water and brings it back to him anyway, “Let’s see if you can keep that down, hey?” He has to hold the mug for him or he’ll drop it. One hand is holding onto the now-empty box; Dean emptied the rest of the potions down the toilet and felt even worse when Seamus tried to stop him but couldn’t do much more than slap harmlessly at his shoulder.

 

By the time half the water is gone, it’s four in the morning and Seamus is in tears. Dean draws the curtains and gently pulls him down to lie next to him. “What did you do it for, Shay?” he brushes the tears away with his thumb- Seamus is tired but not tired enough the sleep. It’s a miracle. He shakes his head, half sits up again but Dean pulls him back down. “You can tell me- I’m your best mate.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Seamus whispers. “’M sorry, Dean.”

 

“You don’t have to be sorry,” he starts crying again too. “But… _why_?”

 

“It was… it was going to _fix_ me, Dean, it’d fix me but you ruined it. You _bastard!”_ but he’s too tired for it to mean anything.

 

“Shay, that stuff was making you ill.”

 

“Would’ve fixed me afterwards, though.”

 

“Fix _what_?” Seamus looks terrified. So, so terrified and he wants to hold him and make it better.

 

“Seamus, mate, what’s the worst that could happen?”

 

“You’ll hate me,” and the look in the eyes; he believes it, genuinely, actually thinks that Dean will hate him.

 

“I won’t. And… and if I do somehow hate you for it, I won’t tell anyone. But you’re crap at keeping secrets, Shay. And this is what happens when you try it.”

 

Watery blue eyes meet his, clouded with fatigue and fear though they might be, “Pinkie swear?”

 

Dean almost laughs, links their fingers, “Pinkie swear.”

 

Seamus shifts closer, breathe tickling his ear and despite the close proximity he can still barely hear the Irish brogue, “I’m gay. And I’m in love with you.”

 

The blonde has barely finished before he’s struggling away and Dean hasn’t a clue what to do, but somehow his arm goes across his shoulders anyway, “So?” Which is entirely too casual an answer for something that has reduced Seamus Finnigan to such a state, _but_.

 

 

“So, it’s _wrong_ and _disgusting_ and my Ma and you… I’m _sorry_.”

 

 

“Don’t be,” it feels _good_ to hear Seamus say it. “I’m in love with you too.” Dean isn’t stupid and naïve, he knows it doesn’t change anything.

 

 

“But, it’s _wrong_. My Ma doesn’t… she doesn’t like it. And I didn’t want everyone to hate me. So, so I tried to change it. But it didn’t _work_ ,” fresh sobs and gentle coughs accompany the confession and Dean wonders how long it’ll take for the potion to leave his system.

 

 

He pulls Seamus close, under his chin and rubbing his back again because he doesn’t want him to make himself sick again. That’ll wake everybody up and just get Seamus more agitated and scared. “Then we won’t tell anyone,” he says, as if it’s that simple. He has no doubt even the Slytherins wouldn’t care- hell, there’s been rumours about _Draco and Harry_ , for fuck’s sake. But it wouldn’t matter to Seamus. Not now.

 

“You don’t hate me?”

 

“No,” Dean pulls their still-linked hands towards him and presses a kiss to the back of Seamus’. “No, I could never do that."


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> how does an asexual lesbian write a gratuitous handjob? by increasing the wordcount
> 
> there is some Messed Up Shit in this chapter so tread carefully and feel free to tell me if you need anything tagging
> 
> *waves* the formatting for this is probably terrible :) but I have finally fucking finished- it may be proof read again tomorrow but for now good night vienna

XIV.

 

_Saturday 8 th August 1998_

 

Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen Dean pours his still-hot tea into the sink and sinks to his knees, feels the floor press through his pyjamas like all the other times he has knelt on a floor because his insides can’t own what he has given them and wishes this time too he would throw up if only for his mouth to be filled with the taste of something else for a while. He realises he is still facing the back door and when he tries to turn his back on it his legs freeze beneath him and the clock says two hours have passed, and it is another hour before something cracks in the air and the sound releases his locked joints like a horse coming out of the gate and he’s up on his feet and bolting for the kitchen door and smacks his shoulder on the door frame reaching into his back pocket for his wand and his wand isn’t there so he keeps his arm moving and clenches his fist instead and when it hits the wall he realises what he’s done and- and- and- no one’s there. He is safe and everything is alright and it’s just Seamus coming down the stairs. Fuck.

 

“You alright?” Seamus asks- his boyfriend, but can he really be when he sleeps all that Dean cannot reclaim?

 

“Fine.” Dean snaps. “You just startled me.” He does not intend it as an accusation, but it’s closer to that than a confession, and now he has no choice.

 

“Sorry,” Seamus says, and means it and if this is what an apology now is, Dean wishes the Snatchers had cursed him to pieces.

 

Him or Seamus?

 

Time was it would have been him _and_ Seamus but now it feels like every day is just an eternity of reaching for each other’s fingers across a staircase as green flames come roaring closer.

 

Dean’s starting to pray that they hit, just to get some fucking relief because it can’t be too different from an orgasm, really, can it?

 

Without looking at him again, Seamus walks past him into the kitchen and starts to make tea. He takes two mugs off the hooks and twirls to put them on the table and then aborts it when he catches sight of the blue still painted on the top. Somewhere in there are Dean’s finger prints, too. They’re going to be part of the waves forever, if he gets his way, though after a week balancing TV trays on their laps is losing its novelty. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. He tries to breathe and his snarling heart nearly manages it. The bones in Seamus’ collar poke through his shirt and flinch at the sound of his exhale and Dean wants to sneak around his waist with his arms and tuck him under his chin and say he’s sorry but his hands are wet with soap suds. So he leans over and grasps the tea towel instead and the action freezes the other boy cold, though he tries not to show it and neither of them says a word about it.

 

He knows he ought to apologise to Seamus.

 

He also knows some stories start fleeing burning cities with your loved ones on your back. No amount of apology for anything will nestle deep enough into his bones and anoint him enough he never flinches again.

 

Dean knows he does it too.

 

He doesn’t know what is teetering on the edge of the cliff inside of him until he turns away from the counter to head back into the lounge and his back feels the breeze coming through the window. Seamus. He wants Seamus.

 

Fleeing the room, he buries his hands in his pockets before they grasp another pair of hands twitching with the instinct to barricade the door with the dresser instead of whatever soft feeling they used to hold on to before they had to hold on for dear life. It took four days and too many close calls to create this instinct; Dean fears a lifetime to break it and- he doesn’t think he can spend the rest of his life like this. The last year was fed on the hope that the war was so they wouldn’t have to be and now the horrible truth is that their children will have to watch them twitch and he’ll never get a good night’s sleep again. _Damn the children_ if he can just go to bed like a normal person for once, please please please?

 

When he’s in the safety of his own head Dean sometimes imagines his future and all there is is his outstretched hand stark against a clean white floor, his fingers twitching. The clock in the village hall tolls eleven. It echoes all the way across the air to them. Sunlight blankets the room. The heavy dull notes settle over his ribcage like closing curtains around a four poster bed. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. He knows he ought to apologise, but he is jealous of how much his boyfriend can fucking sleep. Angry at how much time he must spend alone. Scared of how little love is going to fix him. Disgusted how he can’t even taste the cigarettes over the grave dirt in his mouth fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck  fucking fuck he won’t think about this he can’t he won’t he can’t he can’t he can’t he can’t he can’t he can’t he can’t he can’t.

 

“Here.” The mug burns his hands and Dan has to grip tighter for fear of dropping it.

 

“Thanks,” he replies automatically and follows Seamus into the living room and onto the sofa the same way.

 

The twinset and pearls blonde newsreader has white teeth and tells them about the very sad death of an author. The last time Dean read a book, the words told him kindness is the most revolutionary response to pain any human can have. The sweetest ‘fuck you’ and the best outcome all round. At the time he didn’t realise there was no mention of the fact that it is hard and difficult and not at all easy but Dean trusts Seamus to know this.

 

***

 

When Dean agrees to do the weekly shopping with him so long as he can have a bath and get ready first it brings a smile to Seamus’ face. _He thinks I’m getting better_ , Dean realises, and the thought is bitter and resentful. Just because he’s been too restless to give himself time for anything but a two minute cold shower more akin to rain than comfort, he thinks everything is fine and his boyfriend (the person he’s meant to _love_ , the person who he’s meant to understand better than any of Dean’s _family_ members) is on the road to recovery. No. It’s just a shower is not enough like drowning.

 

 _Fuck you_ Dean snarls as Seamus heads out into the garden to smoke and tempt the reoccurring ginger cat with leftovers. _Fuck you to fucking hell_. He deliberately thumps up the stairs as loud as he can, until halfway up his ankle bends the same way it did that night in January as the- he crawls the rest of the way up and into the bath tub and doesn’t remember to turn the water on until he sits up and emerges again and strikes his elbow on the tap. Only remembers to take his clothes off after he turns the hot water on. It’s a mad scramble to roll over the side of the tub, dripping, back onto the bath mat and when he peels off his jeans. They stick to his skin blue to black like a new bruise and when he tells Seamus about this later he will laugh and his laugh is wheezing now, as if the air is rattling in the expanse of his ribcage like blowing over an empty moor and the lavender he camped under one particularly clement September evening where he could nearly forget he was prey until he went to draw the sunset and remembered. A sketchbook was dead weight on the run, and maybe that’s why Dean can’t draw now. Maybe everything has turned and burrowed inwards so deep it hasn’t heard the war is over.

 

He _does_ throw up this time. Luckily the bathroom window is closed so Seamus can’t hear him.

 

Somehow it does occur to him to open it once he’s finished- air out the smell- and the steam will fog the window otherwise- if it rots the window frame any further they’ll have to see about getting it fixed- they haven’t the money- they have, Dean just doesn’t want a stranger in his house- their house. Glimpses of a blonde halo flake through the condensation. Seamus waves and blows him a kiss and he waves back, but they’re not so close he’ll be able to see it doesn’t make Dean smile and _good_.

 

Stepping back into the water lets heat strafe all the way up to his thighs and he lets the moan fall fat from his lips. It’s the best feeling he’s ever had; sliding the whole way down the grey porcelain until he’s submerged to his shoulders is a close second. There is no room for anything but him and the water and it feels a little like he’s being held. He is going to do this again, lots of times. He’s never going to forsake it for a shower ever again. He _loves_ this. So much so he feels a smile crack apart his face. A chink of sun rising to bleach the night sky.

 

***

 

Lavender Brown in some ways is luckier than Dean Thomas. And not just because she’s alive, but her scars are little and repeated over and over in many places and look from a distance like stars scattered all over her. Skin like the stars and moons all over her dress. Dean hasn’t told a single soul in the past three months that he actually does not mind the scars streaking down her face and disappearing beneath her clothes.

 

He has not seen Lavender in the past three months. He hasn’t seen anyone in a long time. The first thing he does when undressing is reach for the light switch instead of his clothes.

 

Once, at the start, Seamus asked to see him. Dean let him. (Dean will always let him, and he hopes it is for the right reasons.) Now, never, Seamus doesn’t disagree when Dean turns the lights off before bed.

 

Anger boils up inside of him, sometimes, wondering himself bloody if Seamus feels the dark as a coffin too or if it’s just him that was cut to the bone. Afterwards he always remembers that he flees to the sofa every time he feels like that and so he’ll never know.

 

Underneath the scalding water, Dean runs his hands over his body. Him- his body is him and he is his body. It’s never been so difficult to remember. It’s a far cry from the muggle shampoo commercials- more of a hail Mary along each rib bone, a bastard gratitude to a nastier power that he is not dead yet for all he feels the pain of it. Sunlight is pouring high through the window and the condensation streams it white and Dean closes his eyes and lets his ears go under the water too. His body tenses at its own ministrations. All these scars that the war has wrought, yet the biggest is still the place where his hands were torn away and the remains are pure white claw marks only he can see. Who was he torn away from? He allows his hands to brush over these marks. They’re so old they no longer feel like enemies, but more bitter old longings that deserve to be retired.

 

Dean leaves _those_ scars be. There are some wounds that are too old to heal. Some wounds that, if you tackle the voids they’ve left, will only crack further, deeper, until they push every other mountain and memorial out of place and you’ll come back to find yourself unrecognizable. Some wounds are too crucial.

 

On his ankles are the pink lines where Scabior charmed the fallen autumn leaves to rear up and strangle the mud bloods that tried to run. Dean tried, for all the good I did him. He got away, for all the futility of the action in the end. Perhaps that was his plan all long. Perhaps these death eaters were smarter than they ever gave them credit for- after all, who said that all death eaters were just murderous? _This is how we get stereotypes._

 

Next is his calf and the long thin dent where the shovel struck whilst- the next one. The dint of his thigh like a rolling hillock where one of his sisters stabbed him with a biro. It’s possible that this one occurred before he even went _away_ to school, it’s been a very long time since he’s had to think about it. A bramble tried to embrace his hip and lower back when he fought through its overgrown blackberry bushes to get to the abandoned house it protected. The dying of September 1997 he spent squatting there. Until one evening his radio turned itself on and turned itself to _Potter Watch_ without the tap of his wand and he had grabbed his bag and fled the cupboard under the stairs and the house without taking it with him. Instead of sleeping, the next two nights were spent convincing himself the footprints in the dust had to have been only his and no one else’s. (The second night was when he met Ted.)

 

In his little cottage a year later, Dean now has to convince himself that his body is his. Some days are easier than others. There are nights he’ll feel Seamus’ hands on him and think he’s not Dean but a new man Seamus got with after the war. One who survived intact and deserves him and can smile and do everything a boyfriend should. There are times Dean has to remind himself that he’s not dead, but apart from that there’s really nothing much the matter with him. That’s just how life is now.

 

Under his left arm is his favourite scar- his back houses numerous scratches and cuts and blows and some he’s sure are faded though he still feels them. Dean presses himself down onto the bottom of the bath harder, firmer, takes in air when the water sloshes to and fro over his face. No one can curse him through thirteen inches of porcelain and floorboards. By some miracle, the front of his torso is a clean slate. (He saw Seamus’ face that first time once and his expression was the same one Dean knows how to decipher on policemen’s faces even if it was begot of a different hatred, and he’s glad he keeps the lights turned off now.) Shirtless, front forward, his only marred part is the scar under his left arm where a death eater saw something good in the muggle ways and dug a knife into it. What would You Know Who have said at such atrocity? Why does he care what his predator would have thought? Why is the only good thing in the world the fact that he is alive and breathing, and why does it feel less and less like a good thing with every breath?

 

Water ripples around him as he presses his palm to the scar and feels it push against flesh with every exhale. This is his favourite scar. Hitting nothing vital, and capable of nestling out of sight like a bird in the nest; it’s in line with his heart and the whorls and folds remind him of a brick wall. A brick wall shielding his heard. Scarred over so well it’s an impenetrable fortress of brick and sinew and tangles of a blackberry bush, never to let any evil close again and protecting the dark things he feels from the people he loves. Dean loves it. Never lets anyone else touch it. ‘Anyone else', as if he has been undressed by anyone but his boyfriend.

 

Boyfriend. Boyfriend. Thinking back on the dizzying ecstasy with which he once used to mouth that word sends his vision tilting sideways. A bit like driving in a car too long on a hot day, if his family had been able to afford a car after not even having enough food for everyone that night at dinner.

 

His step dad has never once said anything about taking Dean’s hunger as well as that of his own actual daughters. His mother, he likes to imagine, would have protested. Only he doesn’t think about these things because he knows that it is an inevitable fact that some nights parents have to pretend that their skin really _is_ chocolate and there is plenty enough to go around. How parents like that stop from devouring themselves is a mystery Dean will never know. Sitting in the grey bath with bleached walls blending too easily into one long expanse of the same colour, the carpet and sink out of sight and lying fully in the water, he is safe in the knowledge that he could open his mouth and swallow it all and never be empty again. To leap knowing he will be caught is a mercy he has never known up until this point. Pressing against his favourite scar, the water beats a lulling tattoo against his ears. Every part of him is submerged and will never have to emerge again. He is safe. This is not rain beating bullets onto him, every drop exposing some vulnerable dip or dent created with the chipping away that comes of hunger. A cold drip drip that promises you will wake up to a ruthless spring and that summer will turn the soil of your grave dry and crumbling. Summer will come and before your grave will be your death and dirt under your nails. Palms down in the dry dirt, grasping at air as his legs attempt to dart him forward out of danger and death and death eaters and “Dean?”

 

He shoots up and out of the water to sit bolt upright and gasp at the heavy load bearing down on his chest. A breeze hits his skin. It’s like coming out of a grave.

 

“You ready?”

 

It takes some tries to remember he has a mouth and can use it for something besides begging. “Yeah,” the word is hardly any different from the air that he gifts it to. He remembers where he is. The bathroom. Seamus is outside. The water has gone cold.

 

***

 

Unbeknownst to anyone but the muggles he sees during these times, Dean more often than not leaves the house during the day to walk and walk and walk. Occasionally, it’s around the fields and the villages to gather flowers or leaves or soil or simply kneel by a tree for an undeterminable amount of time. Mostly, it’s the five mile walk into the city centre. Here, he mingles with people his own colour in muggle clothes of lurid colours and despite having hardly any knowledge of fashion and privately thinking he looks ridiculous in bright colours, he fits right in. Dean likes it: being indistinguishable. As if he’s part of the background in one of his paintings, only usually he does portraits with a white background _and_ \- he stops that thought there. Looks across at Seamus instead to snap the thread of it. The pout twisting his mouth upwards is cute and pink; he gets the same expression every time he tries to decipher Dean’s writing on the shopping list. As absorbed in his task as he is, Dean has to keep pulling him out of other people’s way because he isn’t looking where he’s going. It’s close enough to holding hands it makes up for the loss. Affection is not something that comes easily in public places, now- not with each other at any rate. It should feel like a death, or at the very least a great grieving loss, except it’s just a weight of his shoulders and sometimes it makes it easier to breathe.

 _At least_ , Dean tries to console himself, _Seamus won’t get lost in the crowd_. It’s busy even for a Saturday morning and when he saw the garish t-shirt Seamus has dug out of the bottom of their wardrobe for the occasion he had laughed until he could hardly breathe and Seamus had crossed his arms and stuck out his pout some more. Soft and plump and soft, demanding to know what was wrong with the bloody shirt.

 

“It looks like the carpet from a bowling alley!” Dean wheezed, hands braced on his plain blue jeans and his plain red shirt creased up over his belt.

 

Despite his protests, Seamus fits right in with the rest of the Saturday shoppers, though even by Muggle standards his shirt is absolutely downright horrendous, enough to attract some polite blinks and stares.

 

Seamus doesn’t seem to notice anything but the cramped scrawls in front of his nose, Dean can’t notice anything but all the people milling around them and how they’re out on the high street and don’t need a swift exit or their backs to a wall. He can’t tell if the emotion broiling inside him is envy or hate, so stupidly pretends it’s neither. Butterflies. Love. Hunger- when was the last time either of them ate, anyway? Did they eat breakfast this morning? Are there any plans to eat lunch? Dinner? Ever again? Dean isn’t concerned if not- je just needs to know. It helps, when he knows these thinks. Usually Seamus is good about telling him things. It hurts.

 

“Where are we going first?” he asks instead, trying to smile.

 

The question brings Seamus away from the shopping list. “Woolworths? Maybe? Most of the stuff on here we’ll get from Tesco's, and you wanted to go to Blockbuster, didn’t you, so we can go there after. I’m just thinking if we’re going somewhere for lunch then we ought to go to Tesco’s after so nothing melts. And that way we won’t have to carry everything around.”

 

“Okay.”

 

It takes him too long to actually understand the answer to the question he asked. “Wait- _are we_ going somewhere for lunch?”

 

“Yeah, if you want. There’s that- oh.” He punctuates his realisation stopping dead in the middle of the street. Guilt twists his mouth into a rosebud and casts his eyes down. _Blue eyes_ Dean realises, because they’re so close he can see, _like the sea_. It helps loosen his shoulders from the way they’re rising with every step the people around them take closer and closer.

 

“Sorry,” Seamus says, eyes bright with something Dean no longer knows what to name. “I should have told you, I- it’s just... sorry.”

 

He shrugs, “’S alright. You just forgot.”

 

“It’s not alright,” he turns his head away in anger Dean can’t recognise and the unknown quantity poisons his insides with green fear. Dean is really good at recognising anger and he can’t just _completely ruin a fundamental part of my life like this._ “Sorry. I’ve been... distracted, lately.”

 

 _Why?_ Dean can’t say he’s noticed.

 

He can’t say that. He hasn’t. “Me too.”

 

A tentative smile waves at him shyly. Like red waves. Blood on the water. Dean isn’t hungry anymore, oh fuck.

 

He expects Seamus to take his hand and drag him away down the street towards the shops they need to be and is disappointed when all he gets is a nudge with his skinny elbow. Of course- they can’t hold hands here- it’s not like at Hogw- he starts walking and nearly doesn’t wait for his boyfriend to catch up.

 

“Are you angry with me?”

 

“For what?” the question makes his step falter, he remembers the last time that happe- _stop it_.

 

“The other night.”

 

“Oh. No. I’m not angry.” It’s a lie, because Dean _is_. Angry at how they fought at all. Mourning that they’ve never had a proper big, important first fight over nothing important like he knows teenagers are meant to do. Furious at all that’s been taken from them and him, and unable to do anything about it.

 

Yes, he’s angry.

 

“Really?”

 

“Really. It was just... everything, you know?”

 

“I know,” Seamus agrees, making the backs of their hands brush as they go inside and he reaches for a trolley. He slaps the shopping list to Dean’s chest with a beautiful, shining grin. “Come on, then. Show me where the ‘asfules’ are.”

 

***

 

Afterwards, Dean insists on the both of them going to Poundstretcher before lunch. There, he lets Seamus loose on the videos whilst he picks four mugs off the shelf at random and takes them to the queue for the till. Sliding into place shuffling periodically forward, he breathes easy for a while; lets himself look around. Poundstretcher hasn’t changed in all the time it’s existed. It’s the same age as he is and is as grotty, dilapidated and dog-eared as ever. Dean loves it.

 

The lady at the till looks him up and down in _that_ way and he feels himself blush right to the roots of his hair and shuffles his feet instead of risking accidentally looking at her unbuttoned polo shirt. It takes a few heartbeats for his brain to realise what is happening, it’s been so long.

 

_How long’s it been since Seamus looked at me like that?_

 

Hello My Name Is Candy seems if anything spurred on by his tittering shyness and leans forward further, wrapping her hand around his to give him his change and put the receipt in his bag. Her hand is warm. Although he shouldn’t, Dean squeezes her hand back and can’t regret it, though he turns and flees into the myriad of shelves back towards Seamus. When he finds him, he turns- there’s a basket dangling off his arm with a _Toy Story_ VHS in it, and cheaper teabags than they would get in Tesco’s- and gives him a wan smile that brings Dean up short. Did he look so pale this morning? Is it just the fluorescent lights in here? Is Dean just too used to him casting shadows everywhere as he bursts with sunlight? He frowns. “You okay?”

 

Seamus waves him off and turns back to the rows upon rows of toothpaste. “’M fine, just... me throat hurts a bit. I’m fine.”

 

The idea of Seamus (his _boyfriend_ ) being in pain no matter how banal twinges Dean’s heart. Turning back to him again, Seamus garners up a bright smile.

 

It hurts worse.

 

“Don’t worry- you can kiss me better when we get home.”

 

“No. I don’t want your cooties.”

 

They laugh until it tapers off for Seamus to cough into his elbow. There’s another twinge, just deep enough in his ribs to properly hurt. Unbidden, he stretches out his hand and rubs his back: Once. Twice. “Maybe we should skip lunch and go home?”

 

“I’m fine.” Rustling alerts them to break apart before a grouchy old muggle couple come round the corner, muttering to each other about Fixodent. A grin quirks his face sideways, “Probably ought to listen to you and lay off the fags for a while, huh?”

 

He just came back from the war one day to a boyfriend that started smoking during it.

 

Dean gestures towards himself. “Even this fag?”

 

Delighted shock spreads out over his face, and then Seamus howls with laughter that tinkles like fairy lights.

 

***

 

(Seamus pushes everything into the closet he used to inhabit because it doesn’t feel right to make Dean’s shoulders slump further when he is already crumbling under some other problem he doesn’t feel he can confide to his boyfriend. Every time he asks what is wrong, Seamus sees an explosion of green light before he smiles and says ‘nothing’.)

 

***

 

“Do you want me to clean that off?” Dean can’t explain why he asks other than their life has become so banal today and he can’t stand being blinded by a wide expanse of blue every time he wants a cup of tea and he’s sick of having to eat dinner in the living room.

 

“Oh. Um.” Seamus freezes bent in front of the cupboard under the skin. Sisyphus. Struggling forever. “I mean- you can keep it if you want, I don’t mind. ‘S good anyway, it shouldn’t just go to waste.”

 

 _It’s a table_ he bites down on words that would come out harsher than he means. _We’ll use the table- it won’t be wasted._ “I don’t mind,” he says. And here they are, stuck at an impasse again. He hates it. The novelty’s worn off and now every crisis exposes the lava truth of two teenage boys, playing house together, with too much of them taken to remember when the other used to be their fucking sun.

 

Existence is horrendous and dull and hard and boring and spent mostly wishing someone had the courage to shove him into the lava or berating himself for not doing it of his own volition. It would not be the first time a black boy’s legs have led him to the mouth of danger. Dean stops every time only because he knows he will not be the last.

 

“No, it’s been long enough.” He turns the tap on and dunks the first cloth he sees in the water.

 

“Oh- no- what- _now_? Hold on- let me!” hectic scrabbling in one of the Woolworth’s bags and he pulls his hand out and is holding a disposable camera and in one movement he pulls a chair out and jumps up onto it and carefully, painstakingly, caringly, lovingly, photographs their graffiti-ed kitchen table for Dean. And Dean, feeling a wretched, wretched feeling, makes his face look grateful. Happy. Appreciative. Once Seamus is done, Dean swoops him off the chair down to the floor, kisses the tip of his nose when he giggles with a blush on his face like dying embers, and then scrubs the table clean until his shoulders ache and his fingers are bloody.

 

Seamus hangs out the back door for a smoke as if it is a train going at a hundred miles an hour- the Hogwarts Ex- he leans back with afternoon sun yellow on his face. He breathes wrong and coughs lightly into the crook of his elbow; cigarette perched bird-like between his fingers he clears his throat and then takes another drag. His mouth forms the same way it does when he kisses Dean. Dean scrubs and scrubs and doesn’t look up until he can force a smile.

 

***

 

 _I love you_ Dean remembers them saying too often. He can’t remember why. Dears if he has actually meant it the last two months, but- no, no, he must have at some point. He _knows_ he loves Seamus, he _knows_ this. But… he can’t feel it. Doesn’t feel it. Won’t feel it. But he loves Seamus and feels it at the same time and he wants Seamus when he’s not there and doesn’t want him when he is and it’s so confusing and not confusing and alarming how he isn’t panicked over how confusing the whole thing is- _why does the wizarding world not have therapists for God’s sakes?_

 

***

 

After the third time Seamus clears his throat in ten minutes, Dean leans over and plucks the cigarette packet from his pocket and waves it back and forth in front of his face like a clock only with more of an accusation. “I think you ought to lay off these for a while, Shay.”

 

He gets a sheepish grin in return, “Maybe.”

 

Dean tuts, reaches into his other pocket and replaces it with a packet of Halls Soothers. Expression softening, Seamus takes them and switches it out for his hand. It burns Dean’s fingers, but flinching away only alerts the blonde boy to the grazes and scrapes over the backs of his fingers. Frowning, he pulls them up to eye level. _This is nothing_ Dean wants to say _did you see yourself after the Carrows_? He keeps quiet.

 

“What did you do?”

 

“Must have caught it, I suppose.” Then it clicks into place and he thinks like a normal person again and understands the expression in the blue eyes before he looks down again. The sun catches his hair and he has a halo. “It doesn’t hurt.”

 

It doesn’t help.

 

The fingers that pat his are shaking, just slightly. Under the weight of something that Dean is now too tired to understand. (Not too broken- he’s sure he could understand it perfectly if he had the catalyst, and that’s perhaps one of the worst parts of the rubble that there is. No one is home, but the lights are still on. One day the lights will gutter out.)

 

Seamus drops his hand as though it burns. A dead body being dumped in the sea. “I’ll get you a plaster.”

 

He heads upstairs to where they keep a paltry first aid kit in the bathroom and of course they don’t need anything more than that do they, if Seamus has charmed their house?” _Their_ house _Dean’s_ house-  _Dean’s. House._ And he’s cast a magic spell on it.

 

“Bastard,” Dean whispers into the air above the sink. It’s the nicest thing he has tasted on his tongue in weeks and he and Seamus blew each other last Sunday. Bastard bastard bastard bastard bastard part of him wants his boyfriend to hear. One part of him thinks _he’s been through enough_. Another part of him thinks _no he hasn’t_.

 

***

 

White noise sparks over the living room like snow and he breathes easy. Tries to imagine it in the air and going into his lungs- to either kill him or soothe him, or possibly the two have become the same thing.

 

If so, what has Seamus become? His boyfriend his boyfriend his boyfriend- is no longer a comfort. A thorn in his side. A knife in the heart. Breath in his lungs. Blood in his veins. Blood on his hands. Not a comfort, but the only place he can go. The only person who can love him without the weight of history behind it. Dean’s got nowhere to go: it’s always been Seamus. That’s probably not healthy, he muses as he cracks his spine and sinks deeper into the sofa, legs narrowly avoiding the mug on the coffee table and creating a disaster. He remembers the new mugs he’s buried in the cupboard. Forgets Seamus’ face. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Even when they both have tea. No more elevens. Breathes.

 

 _I’m going mad_.

 

He laughs. Seamus creeps down the stairs a wraith and climbs over the back cushions and tangles around his legs, hugging them to his chest the way he hid hope in the last year when Dean- the way he hugs his own legs. He looks like he does- did- _does_ whenever he tries to play innocent to a new scheme. Did he ever try it on the Call- Dean sighs, out of his mouth blowing a tidal wave, hiding it by picking up his book again. He doesn’t know what’s he’s reading, which he thinks Seamus probably knows, but he only protests because he still has to furl the damp plasters round Dean’s open flesh wounds.

 

“Don’t pick that up, I still need-“

 

“Oh. Sorry.”

 

“’S okay, just…”

 

With his tongue sticking through his teeth he smoothes the sticky edge down and grins through his eyelashes. “Want me to kiss it better?”

 

“If it’s not too much trouble,” he tries to bat his own eyes back. It’s been such a long time since he froze over that he can’t even remember the name for the emotion he’s meant to be expressing. The only word that starts with ‘b’ is black, and he’s a black hole, good for nothing but drowning.

 

A dull pressure weighing the same as a sigh and making the same noise rests on his knees and Seamus lunges forward to catch his mouth in a hungry kiss and Dean tries to reciprocate in kind- he does, he does, but he’s so tired. Everything dripping out of his heart is replaced piecemeal with an exhaustion coffee can’t touch, and every death just breaks another hole. One of them breaks the kiss. “I’m tired,” Dean says. It’s the truest statement that’s come between them since they couldn’t remember the first time they said ‘I love you’. Their relationship is just another ghost at the kitchen table, another mug gone in the sink to wash later and sooner or later the tap is going to run dry and their love will out. Perhaps it’s not even love keeping them together. Perhaps it’s the simple fact that anyone else would not love them and not ask questions, but- maybe this is a consequence of having too little chance to dream and he should really get some professional help but- it’s always been Seamus. Every picture of his future that doesn’t feature Dean dead has Seamus in it and Dean can’t bear any other picture. The ability to have that future has been torn from him, and he’s fled any memory of it that he had smuggled through unscathed. Now all that he’s got left is dreams to dwell on and a bare table top.  “Not tonight, Seamus, I’m tired.”

 

“Okay,” he blinks kindly. Takes his hands away and leans past to grab the remote instead and lean back like a minute ago they weren’t trying to find oxygen in each other. “Can we watch _Jaws_?”

 

“Is that on tonight?”

 

“Yeah, I saw it in the paper at work yesterday. Channel Four.”

 

“You’ll get scared the first time the shark appears.”

 

“I won’t!”

 

“You _always_ get scared by the shark.”

 

“Well... it’s scary. Now shut up, you arsehole- it’s starting!”

 

“Idiot.”

 

“Prick!”

 

“Dick.”

 

“Shush!”

 

They giggle and it slips away into the sea. The movie begins to play and Dean sinks lower against the arm of the sofa and feels Seamus’ warmth creep further up his legs and turns the page of the second-hand novel he’s read half of without reading a word. Sighs and tries at least to read a little, find some inspiration for his next piece because Aberforth has asked for a new picture of Ariana and he can’t see any girl but a black girl and she’s dead. Not dead as in body, but a swing on the playground still swinging in even though it’s empty. That’ll have to wait until later- maybe tomorrow he can dig out one of his old sketchbooks Seamus fisted from school and stuck in the attic. There’s bound to be a girl happy enough to suit his needs. (Dean hopes the old man won’t mind the fact he’ll have to paste an old drawing’s face over the new, it’s just his hands can’t form a smile anymore. They’re dragging behind him and gouging tracks in the mud; a monkey letting every predator know where it is.)

 

Dean feels his eyes start to droop. Flickers erupt behind his eyelids and he drifts for a long while. The village clock booms once. Twice. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Time passes. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. The counting rouses Dean out of his sleep and he unfolds his arms and shakes out his elbows. A giggle draws out of Seamus, long and languid like a river. “You sleep like a dad.”

 

Neither of them knows what that means. Makes himself smile back, anyway, it’s not too long before the adverts finish and he turns his attention back to sharks and wide expanses of beaches. _Then_ Dean lets his face fall and flicks the page of his book for an excuse not to be interrupted by conversation and the need to lower his book and show the empty space behind his eyes. He starts to doze again; the dun-dun screeches pull a fog over his brain like the final curtain call over a stage. Occasionally he remembers to turn a page. Until he comes to a tipped in illustration of the field just before the murder. A brilliant expanse of fairy tale green, glinting sickly emerald lights, the mast of a boat, the television screen, white light dappling across the page thrown out by the window, teeth baring in a grin. He feels Seamus’ knee shift against his and cause the cushion to dip. He frowns when no hands move into his vision to reach for anything- why, then, does he move? He hasn’t needed to do that since his injuries healed. Even if his injuries make him stiff he stays still as a rabbit caught in the headlights though he never admits anything out loud to Dean.

 

_Does he trust me that little?_

 

Dean doesn’t want an answer.

 

Seamus brings his hand to his mouth and coughs into his fist, hunching his shoulders the same way birds do wings. Dean has heard this sound before. He liked it little then and less now.

 

 _Help him_. Dean can’t exactly put his hands down Seamus’ throat and pull his lungs out now, can he?

 

Abruptly, he stands. “’M going to bed.”

 

“It’s only nine.”

 

“I’m tired.” Muscle memory makes him double over at the waist to kiss Seamus, and he turns away to cough and clear his throat.

 

“God. Sorry.”

 

“You shouldn’t have snuck that cigarette.”

 

A guilty look steels up the stairs of his face. “You found out about that?”

 

“You stank of smoke-” Seamus swallows and winces- “Maybe you should have an early night, too.”

 

“Not _this_ early- I want to watch the end of this first.”

 

“Okay. See you in a bit. Don’t stay up too late.” His words are as empty as Lavender Brown’s coffin.

 

Dean goes upstairs to bed, chest heavy, heart empty, refuge overthrown. Beseeching him not to abandon it with this voyeuristic stranger. Faint music drifts into the space behind his eyes as he closes them- there’s no difference between his eyelids and the ceiling, just his eyelids are entirely his own.

 

_Someday I’ll be Saturday night..._

 

***

 

Every time his feet hit the ground it shot ice up his legs and into his thighs. He was running and every step shot numbness up closer to his throat and Dean feared when it would wrap its hands around his heart but he feared more what would consume him if he stopped running, so the ground flew away until he couldn’t breathe and he fell in a tumble. Down the slope that had suddenly appeared in the ground in front of him. It took too long for him to come to a halt. There was no rucksack on his back anymore and he didn’t feel safe until he turned himself over one last time to feel the ground press through his shirt instead. Lying prone made him feel naked and exposed, twitching on his back like a dying animal. He was dying, but he wasn’t an animal. His scalp might be inching closer to being torn open to create a new wide open mouth that would never be fed, but he wasn’t never going to be an animal, by God he wasn’t going to give anyone that satisfaction.

 

“Should have brought a bigger boat,” Dean wheezed grimly and swore to himself when the words inevitably brought an emerald green river down the slope playing at lava. In a merciful twist of fate, there was no feeling as it writhed over him and began to tuck him into the flower bed. No feeling at all, what a mercy until it reached his neck and he was still conscious with no blind pain to render him not so. When it reached his neck there was fear and piss and the stink of carrion after a riot. Something hot and heavy cut across the back of his knuckles and he tried to rip it out only it brought him into closer contact with it- a hand. The thing and he were holding hands. Dean was glad to drown. Zeus was still after him, but he felt clothed now there was a weight on his back and a burden on his shoulders and a window in front of him. He blinked and realized he hasn’t moved an inch but the sea had and he was still in the same place: lying at the foot of a house bigger than the whole estate he grew up on.

 

Hogwarts _?_

 

No. No. It wasn’t Hogwarts. Horror boiled inside of his guts for a reason he couldn’t explain; he had skin dark enough he needed to listen when the hair on the back of his neck started standing up, and he felt nothing but his knees sink lower into the ground. Well, if they wanted him to pray or play, it was going to have to be pray, because he recognized their games too well. The whole entire castle walls swept forward and let him bow to press his face on the ice window pane. Despite the snowflakes and sleet he could see straight through. A chance to shoot straight should he need it.by the time he did, it would have probably disappeared into the wind. The window was two inches thick green-tinted ice and he heard every word; two girls stood there and he knew them well. Young and playing a game too big for them: bare footed on too-cold flagstones. To have spent your whole life reaching, to catch, only to hold your dream in your hands and realize you are far bigger than now there is empty space.

 

 _It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live_.

 

A great pile of huge white teeth was scattered in a corner, reaching out to glint in the rest of the room like fingernails torn from scrabbling fingers that were gone now but their last action was to hold on for dear life.

 

You are the weakest link. Goodbye.

 

One of the girls had a crown on her head that did not budge an inch the whole time. Just looking at her, one would have known she was not just king but triumphant. She had blood up to the knuckles of all her fingers- brought sight to the blind so they could see her victory, she did, and they all lived happily ever after. The frame rewound and the second girl stood there having just come in the heavy iron door. The king and the lover. The king had such disdain and love on her face that if Dean had not been frozen to the dirt he would have felt a shiver go through his cadaver.

 

“Why did you come?”

 

“To answer your question- I love you too.”

 

“I didn’t realise it was a question, last time. I thought it was a threat.” The look in the king’s face proved why nice words shouldn’t be uttered by cruel people.

 

“If that is the case then you have threatened me a lot of times.”

 

“Yes. It’s- I’m the king, you see. I could.”

 

“You never wanted to be that sort of person.”

 

“I never thought I would be your sort of person.”

 

“You can. You are.”

 

“I’m scared.” _No_ , Dean thought, praying hard as he could. _No, don’t, don’t. don’t say it, please_.

 

“Of me?”

 

“No. Yes. Of… of…”

 

“Love.”

 

“What if I don’t deserve love?” Dean started to pound the ice with his fists.

 

“What if- no. You have slain men, women, children, and beasts. You went to war for me. You told the kingdom you won to go fuck itself. You have fought every man and dragged him down to worship your cunt and kiss your feet. You have killed your father for me. You didn’t kill yourself for me. Love is not worthy of the things you can do.”

 

“Next time a daft fool twangs your corset, I won’t fight him for you then.”

 

“No more fighting. No more killing. No more… swordplay?”

 

“No? just… frolicking in the flower garden?”

 

She didn’t get it, and then her fingers went under her dress and she did. “Only my garden.”

 

“Only yours.”

 

After an eon trying, Dean finally managed to shatter the window ice. Falling through, he realised the floor was a long way down. When he hit, the king put her sword through his heart without even turning his way. Gasping for breath he no longer needed, the black boy stood and, wheezing, became the wind. Winding around stone corners and bleeding wounds, it took him an embarrassingly long time to remember to spread his arms out eagle and attempt to land. He deposited himself feet first, tiptoes to the ground light as fairy dust, hastening to wave goodbye to the wind before it travelled round the corner and brought wrath down upon him for his sins. Safety needed a sacrifice, and he felt safe as houses here in this drafty old castle. Hidden from outside eyes. Safe from the frost bitten hands. He unequivocally wanted no unscarred flesh near him- without blood to smooth a surface any touch caught and pulled at his mind in an absolutely horrendous fashion.

 

 _Soft clothes, darling, never skimp on fabric softener. Comfort brand or nothing_.

 

Music played up and up from the hole in the floorboards and no, pale wraith could not borrow Dean’s dance, what was he just saying about blood and the hands of the free people? It was not happening, it was not happening, “I will not hear it!” Dean yells, the animal of his words leaping from his tongue and haring down to the lower storey to devour the dancers and- good. Good. Good. He fled anyway, because he came from running just in case.

 

No, he came from a culture of running to a box after being born. Some of the mothers spat and birthed their babes straight into the dark ground because it was better than them living never seeing the orange sun. Some deaths you could not survive. Some things a child just could not live with. Others just could not escape. Up more stairs and stairs, spiralling stairs, making him so dizzy he dropped down and crawled instead until his knees were raw, red and oozing blood but refusing to bleed. Something’s gotta give but not his blood, you see he needed that for a sacrificial lamb. Dean crawled until he fell again. This time into a field of daisy chains. Twisted and piled into a mountain higher than buffalo skulls.

 

The wind blew light, reeling puffs of breath over his face and when Dean breathed in turn and synchronized their rhythms together he could taste salt on his tongue and right at the back, too, do hr knew it didn’t come from his eyes but the deep river of green bile flooding from his veins to fill the damn of his ribcage and by gods it was never going to run dry. Life is a long time, Dean Thomas. Yes, I know, I was the one that told you that in the first place when you drank and drank until you about drowned in the god of a somebody and then started to consume the god instead. Had that run out, I think you would have been disappointed if I would have stopped you slitting open its veins and breasts and lapping him clean dry. Flies buzzed straight out of the television white straight to his ears and he didn’t slap them away though he hated them. Because he deserved it for blasphemy to the god even thought I didn’t kill him. My god, Dean, you think it matters you stupid black boy. My god. My god.

 

Dean drew himself up straight and yanked his dignity close- it became a fist round his heart. He couldn’t really breathe, to be honest, but-

 

The hissing static calmed him enough. Nothing to put to his own mouth and take a drag but exhaling out smoke in the air anyway. Tasted on his lips when he licked them that time of cigarettes and when he tasted between a girl’s legs. They had tasted the same both times.

 

I dunno, Sarge, what good is a telly?

 

‘Cuz we can’t afford to put food in anuvver kid’s mouth.

 

Okay.

 

You okay, Dean?

 

Yeah.

 

Liar.

 

Liar, liar, pants are on fire, liar, liar, liar- Dean seized the hands and kicked his legs out and skipped round and round- he hadn't played ring a ring a roses for ages! Round and round. Everything blurred. He was dizzy on something. Something good. A good something.

 

Ring a ring a roses, a pocket full of posies, a tissue, a tissue, we all fall down! A huge omnipresent mouth booms ‘down’ in slow motion and exploded them and then- Dean was on a bed of soft, soft things that smelled of daisies and grass, so he knew it weren’t the flowers. Amortentia, maybe? No, he would have drowned if that were the case. Not Amortentia. A duvet? For sure he felt warm. A duvet on the cold tarmac and cobbles and I think it best you move along son prick it’s raining- oh, but no one could say that to a policeman but specially when your skin went any further up the Dulux Paint Palette than ‘burnt umber’. Sighing, Dean began to walk. Forgot his duvet and went back but it was gone and then started to walk back the way he went but it weren’t the right way. It were the wrong way, it were it were it were. 

 

The right way after all. A bus was pulled up off the curb twenty feet away from him and Dean filed onto the back of the queue gathering like a Nokia Snake. No one came up behind him- huh, guess the snake’s dead. A white man stood before him, back to him, trapezium of a nape poking from under his hat a gold bronzed yellow and the four fingers of his left hand dangling as his thumb was tucked into his blazer pocket and those fingers shook like leaves in the wind.

 

Just a headache came on a bit suddenly is all... I’m alright now, it’s faded a bit.

 

A second act of mercy and the bus driver waved him on without change in his hand and third time was the lucky charm because he hadn't shifted ‘colored’ back two rows and Dean slotted himself next to a person he couldn’t see and looked the opposite way to them and out the window there instead and felt at peace for the first time in a long time leaning back in his seat with dry socks and the sun warm. Blurring past was a car with four friends grouped on the leather back seat gathered round a flaming birthday candle atop a cake. The blue-suited blonde father driving only looked back for the state of his leather upholstery. On his finger was a tan line but no wedding ring and Dean knew why.

 

Soon enough but later than expected the sun went down. It had lasted a good long time, Dean mused. The exactly best and right amount of time: it didn’t feel like the day was drawing to a close, or if it did in his cotton wool chest somewhere then not too soon. Not at all too soon.

 

Alas I do mourn every damn time it ended too soon.

 

Every night in bed your wife mourns with you.

 

Why you little-!

 

Yellow hands expanded and contracted round a throat the same way as a heart pumped blood. A throat stripped raw with strong coffee. Eyes too bruised to betray one more time.

 

Much as Dean tried and tried and tried to focus on the window: lamplights and storefronts reflecting and circling on the glass like moons and shooting stars. He couldn’t. The voice and choking noises were insidious

 

if only everyone had learnt to stay silent and become the things you don’t say, there would never be any more problems in the world

 

 

Dean closed his eyes and turned away from the window. The bus driver’s seated cabin was too far ahead to make out and thought he liked it; it gave him nothing to do. Sighing like a tree, he turns to the person he sat beside all those years ago. The person he chose. The stars outside the window on this side are made of bright gold embers crackling and flickering off a burning cross like dead or eczema-prone skin. Dean’s too used to it to scream. He looks to the person- his person- his lady. Turning to him, too, he gets one glimpse of smooth brown cheeks before her eyes grow deeper, darker and all that remains is the skeleton under her clothes. It makes a picturesque oil painting when they come upon it two hundred years later and make it symbolic. A skeleton, sat contently in her bus seat with her hands folded over the purse in her lap, glasses long gone without a nose to hold them up. Bones extending from a pale hibiscus brown skirt and a dark jacket and crowned with a daisy chain crown, almost as if the ground was trying to claim her before yet more whiteness could do her damage in an attempt to do justice. Dean knows this skeleton. What she did. What she’s done and… was he the white man that wanted to sit down, the bus driver, or the arresting officer? The thought burrows up out of his heart and he thinks it’s vomit until he opens his mouth and screams come out. They do not stop until the skeleton smiles and digs her fingers into his eyeballs and grants him the mercy of being returned to the blackness they know so well.

 

A funeral song or the Lord’s Prayer is cackling over him. He can’t see but his ankle has snapped and it is still snapping, and through his shirt he can feel he is lying in new brown bone-wet dirt. He can’t see but he can _feel_ : carrion and putrid and tired and loud noises. Another voice cackles- the king and the lover. Two girls he knew too well, because their faces were those of Alecta Carrow and Fenrir Greyback. Snatchers. He’s as good as dead- no, this is a muggle way to die, no- no- no, this is a way to die and they will use every way. No way is too good to die, especially when you’re a mud blood. _Get out_ Dean’s brain tells himself before fleeing out the door in a blue suit and leaving a pregnant seventeen year old to kneel and scrub and clean alone. Get out get out get out. dean tries- manages to get his elbows underneath him, even, but then there’s more laughter, this time from the booming lungs of Rubeus Hagrid himself as they charm him to laugh like a snake charmer out of his barrel chest and the giant heaves an object to land atop him the same way a rom-com girl would: tits first. Only when his hands grip too tight and encircle a snapping humerus does Dean realize what they’ve done. His choice, they have at least allowed him that. Feels like a mercy, or a brutality.

 

She embraces him and kisses his mouth and she tastes so cold and degraded Dean can’t tell the difference between her and the dirt they are shovelling on top of his living body, falling like rain.

 

A crumb of it gets between his teeth and he feels it unfold and a person come out- Athena, fully-formed, and he fights for dominance in Dean’s body, battling and wavering like a fish and the soil is covering him too and with his last breath Dean Thomas screams and screams- he shall not begot a child out of dirt the same colour as his skin. He will not bring any child into this. A well scurries into existence beneath his free hand- he reaches- like a sudden gasp of air- grasps _something-_ a hand- he grasps a hand- feels the hand twist in his- he cuts across the back of its knuckles – it tries to rip away from him- he holds on until he feels the bones begin to crack.

 

***

 

He comes out of the nightmare bolt upright and turning his air into screams that surely must deafen Seamus is he is not already deaf to it. (Dean doesn't know which of those options would be worse.) Because he needs his back to something that won't kill him, he rolls until he erupts from the soft covers and tumbles to the hard cold floor- not cold enough in this summer night. This midsummer night's dream does not have a pleasant ending because he has had to awaken from it and Dean does not calm down enough to stop screaming until he has spent several long minutes pressed flat to the floorboards with his palms digging in until they find splinters. Where Seamus is perched on the edge of the bed he looks like the Cheshire Cat and Dean decides that the furry bastard would manage to smile even through this, but unfortunately neither of them are the stupid bastard, though they're both fictional. Turn the lights on, and they would have to accept the truth on the pages of their life. But keep them off, and they can pretend when the sun inevitably rises that the second half of their books have not been torn right out at the spines, and after they have endured through this chapter there will be something left.

 

The mattress springs creak as Seamus shifts, and with his first painless breath of the day Dean says: "Don't touch me."

 

And with his first word of the day Seamus agrees and replies, "Okay. I won't." And with his first sentence he asks: “Is there anything I can do?”

 

 _Yeah, tell me how you recover so quickly. Tell me how to get my shit together_. But- Dean has used up his words and painless breaths and shakes his head. Rocks its crown against the floorboards once and gazes up at the ceiling trying to breathe again. With an aborted rustle, Seamus disappears atop the bed, but Dean knows he’s still there. Can feel the presence in his bones. He hasn’t even gone back to the other side of the bed- to _his_ side of the bed. He’s still there, waiting. _Let him wait_ he thinks, voice in his head vicious and cutting. So, in his own time, he staggers out of the bedroom and down the landing to the bathroom. Lucky it’s the opposite way to the stairs, because if he’s not in the mood to chuck himself frown them then to at least not stop himself from stumbling too close. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fucking fuck.  He doesn’t think of the body he left on the bed in the other room, mostly because he can’t be sure it was not in fact his won and who he is here and now in the bathroom is just a ghost or something less.

 

His chest hurts, his ankle throbs. Breathing is a task he has to put his mind to. He smacked his wrist on the bedside table and there’ll be a bruise tomorrow; if he picked up a pencil now he wouldn’t remember how to spell his own name or be able to draw a straight line. More than anything, he wants to go the body he left on the bed and curl up beside it: warm, soft, ready to be buried and allowed to be loved. Only there are some intimacies that scar too deeply. Some caresses that are salt in his wounds and the plain fact of the matter is that he does not want to have to think about all the things he has had to come through to get here, nor does he want to explain them to his boyfriend, or have to think about them whilst being in close, intimate contact with said boyfriend. Seamus is a pure white snow drift and any hint of dirt is going to turn it into a greying melt that burns his ankles cold. Dean cannot even tell if it is still snowing of it stopped when the war started none of them knows when the war started and every one of them but Dean seems to know when it will end. Has seen the end already. Traitorously, so traitorously, he strips down to his underwear and rocks back and forth on the bathmat. Trying on the forward momentum to make himself puke and on the reverse to hit head on the boiler cupboard, so traitorously he hopes and prays that this has been a lie and the war is not over. Because Dean Thomas does not know how to live without struggling. Cannot tell the difference between that and existence. Because he will not ever come out of any war anything like he entered it, or proud of what he was before. Because once the war is finished and done with he will have time to think of how fucking fucked he is. With Dean’s first tears of the day come waves of bile. It is green.

 

***

 

Getting back to the bedroom causes cracks in the little dignity he has managed to fist together. Seamus sits upright at the first creak of the threshold, looking eager as a puppy to help, and Dean knows he means well but fuck there’s nothing that drives him closer to snapping.

 

“D’you want a cup of tea?” he asks.

 

“Only if you’re having one already,” he shrugs, the same way as he always does. Tone tinged with hurt and voice quietly disappointed. Dean knows it better than any other tone he has ever or will ever speak with. He should be sorry, only he doesn’t have it in him to care. Same way he knows he loves the boy in front of him (his boyfriend _his boyfriend_ ) but can no longer really feel it. The lights are on but nobody’s home.

 

“Yeah, I was just about to get one. No- no- don’t get up, I’ll bring it up for you. See you in a minute.” He turns on his heel and descends the stairs so quickly and with such sore clatter it sounds to all intents and purposes like he has actually thrown himself down after all. Every impact makes his bare feet hurt, and he lets it burn up his toes against the cold tiled floor. Fills the kettle. Turns it on. Takes one mug down. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Gets the teabags and sugar and milk out ready. Waits for the water to boil. Folds his arms on top of the counter and leans as close to the window and the pure countryside blackness as his bent waist allows and, feeling under his shirt, counts each rib he can feel through his skin.

 

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Remembers the panic he had had to breathe around when he had recovered enough not to be able to feel the seventh.

 

There’s more, Dean knows: twelve on either side and twenty four in total. It’s a relief _,_ now, knowing that there are parts of his body that only he has felt. Not even Seamus, whose fingers sometimes steady themselves by slotting into the hollows between them has felt _all_ of his ribs. Dean doesn’t know why it’s a comfort, just that it is and always is on nights like these. As with every other night, the water has boiled without him noticing. Awareness takes a good couple of blinks, by which time he has made the tea and is chucking the tea bag in the bin. The compost bin, because it pisses Seamus off and reassures him that even completely, utterly fucked his boyfriend of old must still reside in his shell somewhere. He doesn’t, but Dean persists anyway, if only because the compost bin is on the way to the sink where he puts the teaspoon on the side to be washed in the morning when they’re supposed to be awake.

 

Every time before and now is no different- Dean goes back upstairs balancing a teacup and the desperate wish that Seamus would have nightmare from time to time.

 

***

 

With a mumbled ‘thanks’, Seamus takes the teacup, and Dean as ever sits next to him, leaning against the headboard without touching, wondering how it’s a teacup when he’s sure he got a mug down from the hooks. No words pass between them except social niceties, and it feels like the space between a coffin and the sky. But there’s nothing to say. All he thinks about is Griphook, and Ted, and Luna and Dobby Dirk Gornuk Harry Ginny Malfoy Manor Greyback Olivander Bellatrix Lestrange Bill Fleur Ginny Hermione Ron Lavender Seamus Neville Seamus Ted- Ted  Ted Ted, and he’s told Seamus all about them at the start of this once already, there’s no need to tell it again. They know everything- so much sometimes his thoughts turn into Seamus’ ghosts instead. Dean sighs. Breathing is the only sound allowed in their bedroom at these times, because how else are they meant to be sure they are both alive?

 

There is no answer, because they’re not allowed to speak one. At some point later on in the morning, Seamus will finish his tea. Later still, one of them will reach across and take hold of the other’s hand and they will stay like that until morning. Dean’s never the one doing the reaching.

 

***

                                                               

Silky strands and tentacles bent to the will of his hands, and Dean sat back and smiled as his life’s work came to pass right in front of his eyes. When he was done, he bound everything together tight with a small elastic band, and as it snapped against the cuticles of his nails he felt his smile get wider and wider, until he had done and could pull himself completely free of the pale bird-boned boy sitting at his feet. His face Dean had never seen, so he could as well have been faceless, but his long green hair was now perfectly, ideally plaited right down to the bottom. With artful askew strands and locks hanging down, it was little wonder the body was immediately rushed away to turn into the Michelangelo.

 

People come and go.

 

Head stuck in a cloud of fireflies, Dean crawled to the door and walked out into the night and onto the long, winding country roads. Sometimes he mistook one of the fireflies for a house twinkling at him, and then Bob or David or Coleman would hiss and spit in his eye furiously until he apologized. And he did. He always apologized. He was born with his mouth wrapped wholly round the syllables of ‘sorry’ and his head bowed down. Every dance looked like dying and Dean had his arms held out for death as he plodded on and on between the hedges and over the baked dried mud- bit like the ground of his ancestors, when in the drought they bled and fed the ground for the last time before they went away for the first and the last time, and no, I am not still bitter, I am just hurt, I am very, very hurt and you cannot stop my brain- that is the one part of me you cannot stop. You can stop every other piece of me but only I decide if I sleep when I’m told, so fuck you. 

 

For once the fuck you tasted of ashes in mouth.

 

Just as he thought the word ‘ashes’, the fireflies began to burn out one by one and disappear with a curling languid ‘s’ of smoke left behind in the blue air. A burning clammy scream built in the back of his throat, and it’d burn if he swallowed it back down with the blood from his split lip and it’d burn if he allowed it to take shape and go off into the night bellowing under its own weight. Dean swallowed it back down. He had nothing to lose.

Because he had nothing else to do, he walked the way the grass blew. On and on into the night with nothing but the soil and the sky to keep him company, and he was at peace. Fear sprouted like a tree in rain once he started examining the peace, because he didn’t come from a culture he came from nowhere he was no one it was just him so dark out he couldn’t even see his hand in front of his face any more if he couldn’t see it how did he know it was really even there? I don’t know I don’t know who I am who was he- as he really even an I any longer?

 

and once you’ve got it good and soaked, son, that’s when you can pull it out again

 

a drowned dog howled, but he only felt lonely because it sounded so far away, not for any other reason

 

the dog probably did shit on his lawn after all- maybe the dog deserved it- maybe every dog did- maybe man didn’t deserve a best friend same way woman didn’t

 

Out all that way away

 

Over the hills and far away

 

the dog began howling again, and it sounded so much like a scream he remembered his name. “Dean” he whispers. “I’m Dean.” Prays it over and over as he walks, ‘til eventually he goes into a forest and doesn’t come out again. Rather than coming out again, Dean stumbles onto the edge of a clearing where the trees have put down the uprising of their brethren and scorched their graves. For a moment he thinks it’s still happening, until someone’s fingers cross in front of his face and help his eyelids blink a few times: not a funeral, a campfire, and it’s not him saying his name it’s the boy sitting next to Ted Tonks with skin the same colour as the moon. There are others of them- a whole group and he _knows_ what will happen next in his blood and bones. That’s why he joins in when one of the Snatchers cracks a twig just to see the campers’ faces wrench around in horror-struck expressions before they bear down on them shooting spells and curses and insults of all kinds. And Dean tries to run but Ted Tonks doesn’t even get his wand out of the pocket of his jeans, it gets caught on the fabric, then he keels over onto his back with all four limbs in the air and twitching prone as a bug and he is completely at his mercy and Dean strides forward and stomps precisely down onto Ted’s face and kills him. Dean is by the fire and screaming. He tries to run. A bolt of green light gets him square in the arse.

 

***

 

Running and running and more running until he grows really fucking sick of running. Necessary though it is, for stupid foolish mud bloods calling themselves ‘Dumbledore’s Army’ are enacting revenge for Dean Thomas and Ted Tonks that night. If it wasn’t for the fact they had broadcast their full names on the wireless for the whole world to hear, he wouldn’t know who it was they killed that night, or that, yes, they were definitely muggle-born mud bloods. Part of him hates them for disturbing his long, swishing curtain of murdered names. Every chance he gets he hauls the wireless out to listen to- it always gives him a good laugh. When he’s joined by Alecta, or sometimes Fenrir, his tongue hungers enough and his heart grows bold enough to beg to let the stupid army find them.

 

_Imagine their faces, go on, we could kill them all without putting in even the slightest bit of effort, can we can we please?_

 

No. no. they must be good little boys and girls and do what his lordship says. Yes sir, no sir, three bags full, sir. Twitching in his fingers with the need for something to do. Gets so bad when he wakes up after a death eater meeting at Malfoy Manor he doesn’t remember the Cruciatus curse the Lord used on him for showing up drink and initially just puts it down to a hangover.

 

These are some good, true friends he’s got, though, because with Voldemort hanging over their heads hissing like a moon or Nagini baying for blood, they pack him off to a muggle hotel in the centre of London, full rooms every night. Hexing muggles and mud bloods and the occasional unlucky wizard until they’re blubbering, fleeing, or tying a noose round their neck is a great sport and keeps him entertained until the man at the front desk checks him in and leads him up to his room on the top floor. Dean smiles as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth and politely steps over the bodies.

 

The man from the front desk fades back into the red carpet of the corridors a little ways before Dean comes to his door. Entering, he realises it’s a whole suite. Pale and shiny and bigger than any other room- more like a flat than any hotel room. Bigger than any London flat he’s ever been in.

 

_You couldn’t swing a cat in here._

_The council lady says everyone’s in the same boat._

Shaking away memories he shouldn’t have and doesn’t want, he crosses to the big window looking out over the smouldering lights of London. The carpet muffles his gore-stained boots so well for one second he’s convinced maybe he is actually flying. A rotting smell hangs in the air, and he sniffs with distaste until the thick odour brings him face to face with a dead thing spread above the mantelpiece. Legs pinned together and arms pinned out wide. The decorator had to sever the antlers from her head and nail them to the floral wall paper separately, else the weight would make her corpse lean forward and dangle in a very undignified manner. Nudity would have been an affront to some unknown’s sensibility, so they clothed her before nailing her here prostate- the white fabric of the thin dress matches the milky eyes. She breathes no longer but the dress clings to her exposed ribs anyway, dipping enough to betray the hollow underneath. The spikes through her limbs are made of heavy old black wood sharpened to deadly points. Dean knows they were hammered in with one blow. No one has ever gone slowly and gently with this dead thing, and it’s a beautifully horrific sight.

 

He doesn’t realise he’s started smiling until he turns away.

 

_count your blessings and smile- smile- smile- some sunny day_

 

the music cloys around him in a caress and he sobs into it. A death eater, yes, but is he not a man? Do not the words ‘love mankind’ in blood all over the walls not get to him, too? Doesn’t he want to be held close dancing, too? Does he not have feelings, too?

 

“We know,” the music promises. “It’s alright, now, come and have a look at this!”

 

But what _really_ gets him over to the window, psalms flush to the glass, is how the lights have changed. They’re twinkling even closer; grown bigger and brighter. There’s gold there, and silver and yellow. Sometimes gleaming in such a way he can see tiny fairies, and people’s faces so far away he can’t make out any facial features. Just pale, quivering shapes like puddles of quinine.

 

Nervously, tentatively, he steps close to the window as he can get. Pushes his own face right up to it _to see_. He has to see.

 

Hogwarts’ exterior does nothing to betray the poison festering inside it and the mudbloods it once let in so freely like a river running into the sea. Pressing as close to the windows as he can, the ancient old castle croons up at him sweetly and moves closer for him. Dean feels his heart expand with a years-old warmth as she shifts and groans her bulk into its new position. She’s so thoughtful- she’s put a window right next to his- so thoughtful, so thoughtful, _oh_. The note trembles on the air a chime and he hopes she hears.

 

Satisfied has been paid the necessary dues, the goddess settles back down and his eyes focus in on the latticed windows a mere two feet away from him. His mind ceases its tossing and turning on the ocean and settles into a deceitful calm.

 

The sea goes out before a tsunami too.

 

A blonde boy is being held in chains. Arms wide, legs pinned, unable to sit down for days and days. With soft little giggles, fairies buzz and fluff over in a cloud around his head before gently, tenderly, two float down with shining wings and place a razor thin white line at an angle over the boy’s nose. As it’s laid down, it gleams suddenly: one bright spark, before disappearing into the form of a tired old scar. Just as the last fairy tails out of a separate window, the door opens. Alecta and Amycus Carrow stride in.

 

 _Go on_ , Dean thinks, _kill him_. A smile comes over her face. A cruel smile that would send a dog running. Dean tries to do so too, only to find his palms are frozen to the window. He manages to peel his face away, but it tears the skin off his cheek. He feels blood on his tongue and turns back to press his other cheek to the window. “Fuck you,” the blonde boy sneers.

 

Oh, sweetie, it won’t work if there’s fear with your hatred.

 

He is no longer in the safe embrace of those walls and what has he got to lose? Only his life, which no one values at all but for the smile it can bring to evil’s pale eyes, yes, Dean screams against his teeth, we have feelings too!

 

Alecta’s eyes glean the same way his new scar just did. She holds out a hand without looking and her brother hands her the blonde boy’s wand, stained with a bloody handprint around the handle. It turns the wood black. “You’ll pay for this, mud blood.”

 

“Bit like how you have to pay a bloke to fuck you?”

 

A gasp wrenches from Dean’s throat as well as Amycus’, but her blow doesn’t come. It’s worse than the blow coming. The fall is always worse than the blow. Her answer is her hand coming around his neck- so gentle- so wrong- a lover’s hand to a murderous touch- yes- _yes_ \- he sees t now. _She’s going to kill you. Do it. do it_. clanking echoes as the chains loosen and the boy’s immediate reaction is to fall to his knees and bring his still-manacled hands to his face sobbing and screaming.

 

Pathetic.

 

“I’m sorry I’m sorry please forgive me don’t hurt me please I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m so, so sorry please don’t please let me go please, please I’m sorry.”

 

Her brother looks confused as she bends with the falling boy and keeps her hand on the back of his neck. It takes several long minutes for her to grow tired of his pathetic snivelling and snotty crying and when that happens she moves her fingers up to tangle in the boy’s matted, filthy blonde hair that hasn’t been brushed in days- its only consolation is that there is no blood and gore in amidst the filth.

 

“Oh, darling,” Alecta smiles. “Look at the state you’re in.” The tender tone does not belong in her mouth, which has ripped men’s throats out from under them before they could blink. It shocks the boy into wheezing silence, breath hitching over aborted sobs. His leaden, bleeding lips have just begun to form the word ‘what’ but never finish when she rushes forward and impales her own wand into his throat and doesn’t lean back until it has burst through the other side. Blood gushes up out of his mouth and down his chin, looking so pretty against his pale skin and black bruises. She laughs when he can barely manage a scream and Dean watches as the Carrows curse wounds into Seamus’ body without stopping over and over.

 

***

XV.

_Sunday 9 th August 1998_

He comes out of the nightmare bolt upright and turning his air into screams that surely by now Seamus must be deaf to. (Dean would return the favour, if the lucky bastard had his own nightmares.) Because he needs his back to something that would kill him, he rolls until he erupts from the soft covers and tumbles onto the hard gravestone floorboards- still not cold enough, now that it is summer. The heat in the night makes bodies smell worse. Dean doesn’t calm down enough to stop screaming until it’s been several long minutes pressed flat to the floorboards with his palms digging in to hurt his splinters.

 

Seamus is clutching at the edge of the bed a worried Babadook and his face makes Dean want to look away, but on the ceiling spiders are playing back the movie of him with his wand through his throat. He stops breathing in or else he’ll sob. If the lights were turned on, now, the interloper would see two broken boys, hearts fluttering in the wind akin to the pages of books. Now, Dean knows why fictional characters don’t continue after the ending- it hurts.

 

Best to keep the lights off, at times like these.

 

Every bone in his spine pokes through his skin and digs into the floor and he feels aches deep in his bones like gouges. The mattress springs groan as Seamus shifts, and with his last words of the day Dean says, “Don’t touch me.”

 

And it’s not Seamus’ first nor his last disappointment of the day but he agrees and says “Okay, I won’t.” Then he asks, like he always does, “Is there anything I can do?”

 

 _Yes. Shut up. No. There’s nothing. Yes. Tell me you have nightmares too. Have nightmares like me. No. because you make me wish this on you too and I hate you I hate you I hate you._  But he’s just now used up his last words for today- maybe for tomorrow as well, it’s too soon to tell, but maybe, so all he does is shake his head and pretends the floorboards are his tomb stone as he tries to breathe cleanly again. Something is crawling around in his chest, his windpipe. He dare not name it and fears if it ever emerges it will be beautiful. The fear floats up past his teeth the next time he takes a breath. With an accusing rustle, Seamus disappears back on top of the bed like he’s in the world war trenches. Dean can picture him: he’s not gone. Just hiding. Slumped over onto his side with the duvet creasing his cheek in red lines, looking at the skirting board instead of his boyfriend for the comfort he isn’t allowed to give. He won’t even consider going back over to _his_ side of the bed until Dean has left the room. It’s a fucked up, twisted ritual, waiting on someone else to get your own life together.

 

 _Let him wait_ Dean thinks viciously, in the same way that he always does. _Let him do whatever the fuck he likes_. In his own time, Dean staggers upright and down the hall into the bathroom like an old man. Old men, probably, have more space between their bones and their skin. He clutches at the sink for support, lurid pink porcelain cold beneath his palms, and he wrenches away unable to breathe again. Pain is throbbing up his ankle but he knows without looking that it’s not swollen or broken or really anything wrong with it at all. In fact, it’d be perfectly fine and healed if it did not have Dean forcing it to remember what has long been scarred over. Fuck. He’s fucked. There’s a bruise spilling over his wrist, so dark it may as well be an ink stain. Or a charcoal stain, from a happier time. Did Seamus ever stop dead in his tracks because he couldn’t distinguish smudges from bruises? He is so pristine in these times that it makes Dean sick to look at him, instead he just wants to sleep in the bath for the rest of the night, or- no, he always goes downstairs and tunes the television to white noise, why does he want- what’s wrong with him? Too much. Not enough- he, he shouldn’t be  like this, letting Seamus carry on the lie he is still a person, still able to function, still in love with him- no- no –no. He presses his hands into his eyes sockets and feels a sob welling up. Lets it come, because he hasn’t cried in a month, but his eyes are dry still and there’s no feeling in his heart. It’s all sunk down to his left ankle, the only bit of him that feels anything. He can’t go to Seamus like this, he can’t he can’t he can’t pretend to be a functional person anymore, when he isn’t even sure he still counts as a person. There’s nothing left for his hands to pull together. There’s nothing.

 

Vomit pours down his chin, his shirt, onto the tiles and his bare feet and he feels nothing before, during, or after. There are no tears mixed in with the scalding liquid and he nearly doesn’t go back into the bedroom to change his clothes because _that’s not how this works_. He is meant to stay at the doorway without crossing the threshold and stay at a distance. God, getting too close to the sun will burn him and desperate as Dean is to feel something, he’d like to run straight in the opposite direction regardless. He comes from a culture of running.

 

The skin pulls at the sodden fabric, trying to cling on, and when he pulls his shirt over his head, Seamus is sitting up  on his side of the bed, eager to help and desperate to understand. It’s not something Dean can give him.

 

Shirking out of his trousers, Seamus sees the stains on them and frowns but says nothing until Dean turns to him and backs up a few steps and asks, “D’you want a cup of tea?”

 

“Only if you’re having one,” he shrugs, the same way that he always does and always will. Hurt and another pained thing laces his voice with honey and the familiarity of it comforts Dean more than anything else does during this time. This is his boyfriend, and Dean is just mutilating him.

 

“Yeah, I was just about to get one- no. No. Don’t get up. I’ll bring it up for you. See you in a minute.” He picks up his clothes and traipses back to the bathroom to inter them in the washing basket (the temptation to hide there forever- maybe even see if he can curl up small enough to fit in with the clothes too- it’s very fucking strong). Going back past the bedroom door hanging open and down the stairs gives him a glimpse of Seamus and he thinks he’s crying, but he doesn’t pause to try and find out for definite. Hobbles down the stairs instead, bare feet and trying to collect more splinters than he can hold in his palms alone. Into the kitchen. Fills the kettle. Turns it on. Takes one mug down. One mug- a mug- definitely a _mug_. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Still fourteen. Always fourteen. Gets the teabags and the sugar and the milk all out ready. Waits for the water to boil. Folds his arms on the counter top, presses his forehead to the cold glass of the window but doesn’t look out. Once, he mistook the whites of his eyes for moons, thought the moon had doubled itself and screamed himself raw and hadn’t been able to stop until Seamus had come in and slapped him. Dean also isn’t sure if he can resist the temptation to go outside tonight. The pull to go and dissolve in a puddle on a country lane the colour of spilt ink and no more need to think. Clings to his ribs under his shirt; his hands feel like a stranger’s so he has to hold on tight. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven somewhere. Ghosting over the space where it eludes him. Missing it. Wondering how he’ll prove himself alive once the remaining six soldiers wither and die away.

 

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven somewhere.

 

The other side. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven nearby.

 

The mugs. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen.

 

The water’s boiled and the next thing he knows is clomping back up the stairs to Seamus, teacup in hand, trying to remember if it was the normal bin or the compost bin.

 

***

 

“Thanks,” Seamus mumbles when he takes the tea. Dean goes round to his side of the bed and sits down, leaning back against the headboard, tilting his head far enough back it hits the wall, closing his eyes and breathing in silence that tastes of carpet. There is nothing to say in these times. Nothing to be said and nothing to be remembered when the sun comes up except how much he loves his boyfriend. It’s winter inside his heart, and the nights are long. His mind ambles down a country lane and passes Griphook. Ted and Luna. Dobby and Dirk Gornuk, Harry Ginny Malfoy Manor Greyback Olivander Bella-

 

“Dean? I think we need a good night’s steep.” His eyes snap over to the blonde blasphemy. He wiggles his empty teacup at eye level. “’Cuz you have to steep the teabag. Get it?” if he wasn’t grinning wider than he has in months Dean would scream at him.

 

He bites his tongue and fills his stomach with his own blood. “Oh... That’s terrible.”

 

And the bastard grins at him. Grins. As if he hasn’t just interrupted funeral rites, as if, as if, as if, fuck him. Dean puts his head back again and doesn’t look at _his boyfriend_ until the sun comes up. There’s no nightmare Monday night; there’s no Dean in the bed either, and he didn’t know that the absence of fear could sit in your skin the same way fear itself did.

 

***

XVI.

 

_18 th August 1998_

 

Coming up out of sleep has now twisted into the most unpleasant experience Dean can imagine: one minute there is nothing but dozing in a warm grey cave, then an itch of awareness not so different from pain starts to crawl up every never of his spine and poisons his warmth before he wakes, confused and grieving a thing with a name that dies on his tongue. He could cope with all that, he thinks, if only it was as sudden as a sword.  But he has to learn of it slowly, itchingly painful, and it’s an excruciating fate, poisoning his one pleasure. Just get it over with. Rip the plaster off. Bring the sword down. Chop his head off. Just let him _rest_.

 

Accepting that relief has now fled him for good, Dean pulls his skeleton up off the sofa and stumbles into the kitchen, wandering why it’s light outside.

 

11:32am

 

Oh. That’s why then. He frowns, turns and runs upstairs. Something’s wrong- Seamus us- Seamus isn’t here- Seamus- oh, God, Seamus- Seamus- Seamus- Seamus- Seamus- is at work. Tuesday. It’s Tuesday. Oh, Christ. His heart hurts. Maybe he’s having a heart attack. The pain brings him to his knees. He can’t remember how to breathe. And- something is flooding his ribcage scorching yellow- I- it’s- fear? Fear. He’s scared. Dean Thomas is scared and crying and he can taste tears and snot in his mouth and feel threadbare carpet beneath his palms but- run- run- he has to run _now_ and he does. (How can he run if he can’t breathe?)

 

He runs until he hears shouting, and then he flees from them, too, and doesn’t stop until his body collides with something hard and he falls to his knees a second time, still without oxygen or any idea of where he is. A smoker’s cough echoes somewhere in the distance and Dean snaps his head round- Seamus?- No. No one. It’s just him.  With no idea of where he is, how long it’s been, how he’s going to get home, why he isn’t on his knees and how he can somehow breathe again and better than he has for three months and where is he? And he is still in his pyjamas? And: he hasn’t brushed his teeth. Well, at least he’s got one workout in this week. (His ankle hurts.) When was the last time he brushed his teeth? Ate? Dean doesn’t remember what day it is, but he’s got 10p and a pen lid in his pocket, shoes on but no socks, no clue where he is. He buys two Freddos and eats them standing out on the curb, because the man in the newsagents gave him long enough to read _Tuesday 18 th August 1998_ on the front page after paying before with a narrowed gaze and heavy tone suggested he might be best _moving along_. He does.

 

It’s the muggle world and it’s disgusting how grateful he feels despite how his skin is crawling. He wants to take it off and fold it into a briefcase like a suit and leave it on the bed in a hotel room. Chocolate coats his tongue and he can’t remember the last time he had any- maybe when he took his sisters out to the park and brought them all something to eat n the way home? That was before the war, though, _before_ , when he was in sixth year- no, fifth year, July 1996 before he went back for sixth year because after sixth year then he didn’t even go home he went

 

he  doesn’t realize he is completely frozen but for the spasming of his hand and wrist lying on top of the garden wall next to him until a wrinkled old man whose eyes crinkle the same as waves thrown up against the side of a boat asks him if he is alright or there’s someone he can call for him?

 

“N- no,” Dean wheezes out, more part of the wind than actually speaking. His knees are trembling and twitching and  he thanks the man and staggers away on an uneven keel. Seamus. He wants Seamus. He has a pen lid in his pocket and a leftover strip from a fortune cookie he can’t remember eating that politely informs him with peering pince-nez-ed nose that ‘I found your boyfriend on EBay’. There’s no bin in sight and when he passes one he goes to chuck the chocolate wrappers away, but his fingers act on their own accord and fold them careful as lover and smoothes the ceases out. (That old man would hate him if he told him about Seamus and Dean feels sick.) Is he a controlled puppet or have his hands been cut off and turned into spider monsters? possibly no difference at all, sadly, he recognises where he has run to and turns toward the street that will lead out of the Town Too Big Even Though It’s Small up to the winding roads where their cottage has slept on the grass for a hundred years. A lightning bolt hits him. No one else can see it. Their cottage is non-existent even to their fucking landlord and yet this still isn’t enough for Seamus to feel safe. Logically, he knows that growing up with that feeling in his bones should make him sympathetic and hope that it’s not a curse to be inflicted on anyone even those that inflict it on him. All his brain thinks is _bastard_. All he hungers to know is how a boy can fall asleep feeling unsafe. How deep your bones have to be that you can dampen down on the fear running riot through them, close your eyes, and sleep peacefully.

 

Little death, he once read. Does Seamus die every night, like Dean’s heart does? Once he closes his eyes, does he become a corpse and not even see the coffin? Does he wish Dean would stay lying next to him to stave off the loneliness? When he does stay, does he pretend they’re buried together? A shared grave doesn’t sound so bad as long as it’s unmarked.

 

***

His dreams are good for one thing, and that is reminding him what happiness looks like. Ariana Dumbledore is sitting cross-legged in the sun with her back to the canvas, but with just enough face showing to prove it’s definitely her. She’s currently faceless and a murky, milky, mired cloud of canvas scraped through after two attempts by him to paint her face.  Part of him considers just carving a hole through it, or leaving it a white void forever because surely, surely that would be a truer representation of this long ago girl than a smile?

 

Dean shakes his paintbrush so it spatters red all over his jeans, then rests his forehead on the heels of his hands and his elbows on the edge of the kitchen table. What does it matter? She’s soon to be left behind with the rest of the 20th century. He’s a little fuzzy on the details- perhaps even she was never a part of the 20th century, and is being forced to cling on by a brother rich with regret and little else. What Dean can’t understand is how a boy can punch his brother at a funeral and emerge a man with no one seeing the corpse he added to the coffin. How two brothers cannot feel the need to burn away every remaining piece of their dead but are quite easily sleeping with it locked away in the vault of earth, ready to be unlocked and reopened again at any point. Why a boy who broke his brother’s nose would turn into a man that forgave his brother; lived a life with his brother in it, could bite down on his anger as easily as it was his tongue. It’s all a goddamn mystery to him. Maybe he should stop meddling- _that_ gives him an idea like the first gasp of air merging from the sea as a forgotten memory reawakens.

 

He carts his paints and brush into the living room, and surfs the TV channels until he finds an episode of _Scooby Doo_. Blue-suited white men hunger for money and fear and privacy and bright shiny WASP symbols of the New Age expose them and receive the police’ thanks and gratitude. Dean’s so far fucked he can’t even identify as Scooby anymore, but he doesn’t change the channel. Instead, he paints daisy chains all the way from his thigh to his ankle, marvelling how they look against the faded blue denim until he _realises_ and hares back to the kitchen where he knocks the canvas off the table and onto the floor under the oven in his haste. On his knees, he garners Ariana with daisy chains and loops one between her outstretched fingers and up over her shoulders to crown her the queen of love and beauty. No face- features- identity- but a beauty, obvious to everyone she is dead and was sad as a smile. Tragic in that she never got the chance to become a mad woman and is instead stuck as a virtuous maiden until her picture is burned for kindling in some later time. Did Aberforth ever find out which curse killed her?

 

Crouched and bent double, Dean finds he owes this girl something. A prayer, maybe, or a release. Something to honour the hundred year-old hag she’d have loved to be. Sacrifice for the century of idealising she has been forced to endure. A reflection in place of the smiles he can no longer give his sisters. Something real. Painting the true Ariana Dumbledore, who was more than the terrible things that happened to her and the tragedy inflicted on her and the chains her brothers’ minds locked her in. There’s a huge great debt sinking her grave deeper into the earth than it needs to be; Dean’s the only one who can do anything about it, so that means it falls to him- and- he hasn’t felt the blood run through his veins in a long time. Probably this isn’t what it’s meant by the phrase ‘feeling alive’, which says something as to what he has become but- but- but- his heart still expels blood and his knees are starting to twinge from staying in the same position for too long.

 

He is definitely alive, and he is prepared to pay his dues to the dead. Those two facts make him far better than most people.

 

In his mind just above his eyes he sees the picture he wants to create: soft and gentle and edged with steel. Grass and unplucked daisies fighting to climb up bare, bruised, skinny, knobbly knees and legs; sun-dappled and dying as dusk comes to settle as the day shrugs it on like a coat and frees is hair from the collar. Dirt between pale toes starting to tan, dirt under her toe nails, in her blisters and nettle scratches. Bare arms and a perfect smooth expanse of neck coming up out of the hem of her dress and scattering into her hair like snow towards the base of a mountain. Soft, silky, burnished brown hair swept up meticulously effortlessly into a soft 1900s’ Gibson Bun and she looks beautifully normal, picture perfect happy and content. She is fourteen years old and has not had to sew a burial suit with her own hands, she has not has teenage boys tell her she is a freak or at least she cannot remember it if she has and the monster inside of her if there is indeed any is a friend or at complete and utter peace with everything that has happened to it. Pale pink flowers peek up through the blades of grass, their evening shadows green and gold and her hands are outstretched towards them, wanting to touch those soft, soft things that seem to exist only for beauty and the daisy chain garlands swoop over her shoulders and flutter in the breeze and free from the folds of her simple pale dress look like wings even though Dean is sure this girl was never let near a broomstick. It’s possibly the best painting that he has ever done. He just needs to finish the face and he tries honest to God he tries, because he has her face included in the picture in his head and the identity is the whole _point_ of this gist, isn’t it? He can’t do it. After scraping away the fourth attempt, he realises how much his knees hurt and gives it up for a lost cause. There is no way he can paint both Ariana the gift and Ariana the girl. Both of them would have had tired eyes with too many shadows. Face blotchy from sleepless nights of crying. Cracked lips and snot and spit and salt and tears all streaking down her cheeks and round her mouth when the girl should have had her enemies’ blood there instead. When the ice started to fall from the sky. The flowers surrounding her should have sprouted from blood, and he wants to apparate to Aberforth wiping down the tables in the Hog’s Head right now this minute and scream at him that his sister was a mess with a temper made dangerous by torture and trauma. That she was nothing like the sweet little prim girl he hates his brother for murdering, even though it is still murder even when the victim is not all you have pretended her to be. Curse him for asking Dean to do the impossible. Berate him for forgiving his brother. Damn him damn him _damn him_. Him and his mother both.

 

Aberforth’s mother, or Dean’s? Why damn the woman a man left?

 

Does this mean Dean is as bad as his father?

 

Ice runs through his gut. He staggers to his feet. Half his paints are still on the sofa and half are still scattered around the kitchen floor- some under the cooker, the chairs, the table. Flecks of blue still cling to the edge of the wood. Dean hasn’t gone to the Seamus’ photographs developed yet. Seamus. Seamus will be home soon.

 

4:02pm

 

The village clock boomed and he didn't hear it. There’s a shopping list scribbled on the back of a receipt and trapped under the never-used teapot he hasn’t thought to buy yet.

 

With shaky legs, Dean gets to his feet. “Okay,” he mumbles to himself, to just double check that he is still alive and breathing and something other than ice runs through his body and that sound still exists. It’s too quiet in their house- the television has turned itself off at some point and the clock’s second hand doesn’t work.

 

He scrubs his hand on his jeans, avoiding the carefully-painted blooms, and heads out of the front door. He now has money and a shopping list and a biro lid in his pocket, shoes but no socks on, can’t remember where his coat is, but he has now brushed his teeth and knows he next meal will be in just over an hour and a half’s time, which is... progress. Though it feels the same as looking at old photos every Sunday when he goes home for dinner with his parents and sisters.

 

***

 

It’s too hot and the breeze can creep up his t-shirt to his shoulder blades. His blisters are bleeding by the time he’s made it to the bus stop- these are different trainers, of course, after his other pair got all muddy this morning. He stares at nothing but his ankles the whole ride there, hoping that the river of blood will make it all the way down his trainer to the floor but he gets off before it does and he has to imagine the crimson footprint he would have left in its place. Feels faint and tells himself it’s just the fact he’s holding a heavy basket in one hand, never switching it to his other. He can’t remember if he ate last night. He thinks of times gone past and hears coughing.

 

 _THE FINAL FAREWELL_ says the newspapers, and Dean quickly turns away and fumbles when he has to give to the lady behind the till. She might have a glare for him, but if so it’s well hidden and to her credit he doesn’t dare look up a second time to see. She’s probably a formidable former headmistress who had to come here when they said you couldn’t give children the wrong end of a cane anymore and complains about it every time she talks. It sounds like a fulfilled life. One where its liver never feels empty or hollow and for the briefest of seconds Dean wishes he was her. Steel grey hair and cold face. Grey eyes and tabard struggling to contain the woman she is. Then she hands over his change and receipt and the skin is cold and clammy. Ted Tonks felt the same when Dean took his wand from his hand and snapped it across his knee. It left a black, black bruise over his skin there for weeks after the fact, and he kept turning to ask Ted if he heard that and- Dean takes his bags and leaves for the bus stop, desperate to go home and turn the TV on again so he doesn’t have to think. Maybe sleep some more. Remember enough of happiness he can find the solution to Ariana who is not Ariana and her face. The village clock announced it is five ‘o’ clock. One.Two.Three.Four.Five. Why the fuck does he always have to count everything?!

 

***

 

“Dean? Dean! Where are you? Dean!” the screams make him want to turn up the garden path and go out again, but his feet lead him inside. The milk would go off, anyway.

 

“Seamus? Seamus! I’m down here, what’s the matter?”

 

Instead of an answer there is the pounding of feet, so he heads into the kitchen to put the bags down on the table. He is too tired for this shit.

 

“Dean!”

 

“I’m here for G- oh, God, what is it?”

 

Tears are glistening on his boyfriend’s face; without thinking Dean rushes over to meet him at the kitchen doorway and take him in his arms as tightly as he dares to hold him- Seamus has no such qualms and throws his whole weight around him in return, letting the sobs howl into the air with the all ferocity with which he feels them. “You- and- I came home- and- I thought something must have- looked at the window- then everything was on the floor and- and- and- oh, God,” he blanches and Dean cradles him against his shoulder as an excuse to stop looking at him.

 

“Ssh, Shay, shush, it’s alright now. Everything’s fine. You’re safe, I’m safe. It’s alright.”

 

“I thought I lost you!”

 

“You haven’t. You never did.”

 

“I- I know,” and his arms clutch tighter, grasp painfully at the back of his neck, the sweetest noose Dean could imagine. The only thing Dean can imagine. “I know- I know- just-“ more sobs catch in his chest and turn into wheezes. Like the wind blowing against the cottage during a storm. Dean rubs a hand up and down his back.

 

“Sshh.”

 

“I know- I know- I know,” he sobs.

 

Helplessness licks flames up Dean’s arms. He tries saying ‘shush’ again, sometimes mumbling other words he can’t remember after they leave his mouth, but they seem to stick in Seamus’ head a bit better because the sobs and sniffs and occasional fits of coughing start to die down until they’re hardly distinguishable from rustling paper.

 

“I just...” Seamus begins before breaking off into coughs so harsh he tilts forward into Dean a but further; bangs his head against his collar bone as he struggles for air. On autopilot, his arms minister to him. Hold his shoulders steady and rub his back. His mouth is numb and his tongue is heavy.

 

“’S alright, Shay. You don’t have to say it.” This isn’t the same way he told Hermione the same thing. This is trying to silence the executioner before he reads the charge sheet. This is putting a knife to a man’s throat to buy his silence.

 

Seamus always was the most talkative boy in their year.

 

“Just- I came here and you weren’t- you’re always- I looked and I didn’t even realise you weren’t there, at first. Then I came in and I thought- oh, God, Dean, I was so scared something had happened to you.”

 

Slowly, the accused in question shakes his head. “No. It’s... I went and did the shopping and- um.... the bus was late. On the way there, I mean. So I didn't get to Morrison’s until gone four. And then it was, uh, busy there, too. I think. Or only two of the tills were open, so I didn't get home until late. That’s why.” Dean hopes he makes Seamus feel guilty enough for the both of them, because he isn’t feeling guilty for being late or for lying about it.

 

“Oh. _Oh._.” He relaxes against Dean like the tide going out. “Fuck, Dean, I was so stupid. I’m sor-“

 

“No. You weren’t. It’s fine.” He rubs Seamus’ back again one more time before turning away. “Help me put this away, yeah then... I think we both deserve takeaway tonight. I’ll order us some more Chinese later. How does that sound?”

 

“That’s- yeah. Good. Sounds good. Here, let me-“ Dean startles at how _warm_ it feels when their fingers brush. “Oh- Sorry.”

 

“No,” Dean replies too quickly. Seamus’ face falls in the blink of an eye. It’s a feat because he was already really bloody miserable. “I mean- it’s okay. I mean... God, we’re a mess aren’t we?”

 

The look on Seamus’ face- his boyfriend his boyfriend his boyfriend whatever that means- sets him off laughing even though it’s heartbreaking. He’s starting to regret it, though he can’t stop himself, when Seamus starts laughing too. Giggling through the tears and the snot and the mess until he’s convinced himself that everything is going to be alright again. It’s a really easy thing for Dean to give him because it’s not actually coming from him at all.

 

***

XVII.

_Wednesday 19 th August 1998_

 

At five ‘o’ clock Dean waves to Seamus through the window as he comes up the garden path to the front door and the second he hears his key in the lock he bolts to the hallway. The momentum inadvertently catapults him straight into the blonde boy’s arms and they tangle around his back before he can pull away and set his mistake to rights. When Seamus tilts his head back and smiles up at him with relieved blue eyes and an unburdened smile, it doesn’t feel so wrong. Even when he leans forward and extinguishes the candle by kissing him soundly, it isn’t painful. Just using muscles he hasn’t used in a while. Seamus tongue presses at him until he relents and opens his mouth- he probably tastes of this morning’s toothpaste, still, seeing as lunch was beyond him, and it goes fine with the chocolate he can taste in Seamus’ mouth. The love that his tongue pushes down his throat and that his own returns two fold. Dean hasn’t felt like this in a long time. Maybe he’s getting better?

 

Eventually, they have to part for air. Inside of his own head, he curses himself for it- all he needs is Seamus. “Hi, honey, I’m home,” Seamus says. The words hit his collar bone in a gust of wind and he shivers all the way down to his toes. “What a welcome that was.”

 

 “Well,” Dean replies whilst casting around for something to say that will not drive him from his arms. “I’ve missed you.” It’s the right thing to say: his boyfriend smiled as bright as the sun coming out and kisses him again. Again.Again. There’s a frantic momentum when they draw apart for the second time, as if they can’t wait to go back to each other, and Dean feels his own face split into a grin all of its own. Light spills through the glass in the front door and throws Seamus into golden relief.  Honey brushes his skin into a dazzling canvas Dean paints his fingers all over. His neck when Dean bites into it carries the taste of salt and the smell of books and the spark of magic that is completely, utterly related to how he’s squirming under Dean’s touch and trying not to beg for more.

 

“Kiss me,” he finally demands, with a pink pout and Dean bites down onto his bottom lip until he moans. The scar jilting across his nose looks like silver, then gold, then silver again, then bronze. It’s a tiny little piece of Seamus for everyone to see inside of him and get to chance to realize how brilliant he is. If no one sees then, well, Dean is more than happy to take their place worshipping at the altar.

 

“You’re so beautiful,” Seamus breathes against his lips- words made from Dean’s own exhales, that’s how fucking close they are. Seamus’ hands are warm and pulling at the hem of his shirt; wrapping and caressing the jutting of his hips and fingertips poking what they can reach of him below the waistband of his jeans. Dean steps as close as he can and thinks of nothing but Seamus and his blue eyes and his blonde hair. The mouth whispering his name and turning it into a prayer, a litany, a senseless murmur of noise against the unmarred planes of the hollow of his collar bone- the highest part of him he can reach, until Dean puts both his bug brown hands on his face and tilts him up to kiss him as hard as he can. There’s something pressing hard against his thigh. Something unfamiliar and so, so right. He thinks it might be love.

 

All he can see in his vision is burnished blonde hair, ruffled and dishevelled and he marvels at the contrast as one of this hands pushes through it and tangles itself in the strands at the back of his head, the shadows his body throws as he leans to kiss all the way down his neck and pluck at Seamus’ shirt.

 

“Get this off,” he orders, voice weighed down with desire. “I want to see you.”

 

Without even a blink of hesitation, he obeys. Elbows fly up into the air and she shrugs off the offending article and chucks it behind them somewhere. Dean doesn’t care where. All he sees is Seamus. Bastard beautiful and holy: pink watercolour flushed over his cheeks and wet purple roses blooming where Dean’s mouth has been. He finishes the bouquet right over his heart as Seamus’ hands undo his belt and discard that, too, then delve into his jeans and between his legs.

 

“I love you,” Dean says, spilling into Seamus’ fingers like water. “I love you, I love you.”

 

“I know,” Seamus whispers straight into his mouth, until they’re so close and Dean is so gone he can’t tell if he’s really even saying the words out loud at all or they’re so in love in this evening sun together they can speak without words. Are they so in love they know each other’s minds?

 

 _Yes_.

 

“I know, I know, I love you too, Dean, I love you too.” He lets Seamus’ hands go wherever they please- under his shirt, round his back, up to his shoulders and the back of his neck, downwards again, to work his magic a second time. Dean moans as the pleasure releases, falling back against the wall as his legs grow weak. He isn’t sure how much longer he can stand, but he wants to at least reciprocate in kind first before his legs give way and he drowns in this feeling forever. With his hands trembling, he pulls Seamus even closer by the waistband and just has time to feel the desire there before their mouths crash together and they’re pouring their lungs out to each other with the air hot and electric around them. He loves this boy and he’s going to show him. He loves this boy. He kisses deeper at the same time he slides his hands down from clutching his shoulders all the way to his trousers. He’s going to show him.

 

He dives beneath the fabric and finds what he is looking for. As soon as their skin brushes Seamus moans into his mouth. Dean can smell the desire on him, _taste_ his love for him, feel it in his hand and slowly, agonizingly slowly, starts to tell him ‘I love you’ back.

 

“Dean,” he moans, drawn out long and low and languid with want. Whatever he has to give: Seamus wants it. Wants _him_. It’s an exhilarating feeling, sped on by the knowledge of desire, he draws more noises from the back of Seamus’ throat. So low and desperate he kisses him again; tongue to tongue to swallow them straight from the source of the river. Seamus is burning his hand, then scalding. They don’t stop kissing for even a single second. He falls to the floor with a boy in his arms. Lands on his knees like worshipping. He is he is he is.

 

***

XVIII.

_Thursday 20 th August 1998_

 

If he had known when he woke up this morning what was going to come of trying to find his second-favourite pair of jeans since the first and only time Seamus was allowed to do the washing, he would have just rescued his favourite pair from the washing basket and gone on with his day in blissful ignorance. But it’s too late now, and his heart is hurting and he can’t fucking breathe and- and- and- and- he only wanted to find his jeans. Dean recoils from the open drawer and scrabbles back and- hides under the bed of all fucking places- why is he hiding under the bed? And then he remembers and the damn breaks and the whole torment starts all over again.

 

***

 

He realizes he is screaming that he’s sorry over and over again to the bottom of the mattress. He starts pounding on the bed slats. Something wet drips onto his face and it may be tears or it may be blood. It tastes like soil. He screams until the fire gutters out and all that’s left is his anger. _Why_ did Seamus put it there? _Why_ did he decide to put him- his boyfriend, his boyfriend, he is Seamus’ boyfriend- why did he put him through this? Why does he delight in making Dean’s chest struggle to breathe for hours even after the fear has dissipated?

 

“Bastard.” Dean snarls. “Bastard!” Dean’s going to fucking kill him when he gets home.

 

***

 

When he finally feels well enough to crawl out of his makeshift grave, the floorboards are scorched where he was lying. Like a snow angel, or a chalk outline around a body. Or are those things the same?

 

***

 

 _Kill him_ Dean thinks as he storms through the halls of the Ministry Of Magic. People part for him like the red sea. (McGonagall and Snape come to mind, but he is nowhere near her level.) they scramble away from him as if he’s the Dark Lord himself- he feels dark and his skin might as well be night-time, there’s a forest fire raging under his skin and it’s a winder he isn’t breathing out smoke. He’s going to kill him. Did consider sending a patronus ordering him _home, now_ , but after four attempts to touch the thing in the bottom drawer of the bedside table he accepted it wasn’t going to happen. So he apparated here from their cottage- fuck your charms, Seamus, they’re fucking shit- and now Hermione has given him directions to where Seamus is working today and he’s charging down here. Here he is. Perhaps she recognized the rage in him: burning black ice water. Kindred spirits, maybe? Too quickly and not quickly enough, Seamus comes into view. Lanterns float and bob in and out of sight and cast shadows over his face. If his scars were exposed they would be alive and crawling right now. Consuming him. Hungry mouths full of teeth.

 

Dean snarls and yanks him round by the shoulder so they’re face to face. He yelps, before he realises who it is. Side effect of trauma, Dean knows, but that doesn’t give him the fucking _right_. “Dean? Why are you here- has something happened?”

 

No, nothing’s happened, why does something have to happen and why aren’t you fucked up enough that you don’t question why your boyfriend’s hands are getting close to your neck? _Kill him_.

 

He yanks Seamus close, so they’re breathing each other’s oxygen. “I found what was in the drawer.”

 

“What drawer?” the expression on his face is only more kindling for his heart.

 

“Your bedside table.”

 

All the colour drains out of him. “Oh.”

 

“’Oh’? That’s all you can say?” every word is punctuated by a bruising jab to his chest. They should really be punches to the stomach, but he needs an answer first. Else it’ll burn a hole through his brain whilst he’s trying to fall asleep. Seamus never has any trouble sleeping. Bastard. Apologies are spilling from his mouth. Tears drip into his mouth and re-emerge in tiny crests of bubbles and spit under his tongue. Yes, Dean’s close enough he can see. No, it’s not an endearing quirk, quibble or quiddity. This is one of those kinds of mistakes that leaves you flat on your back mourning and hungry, waking up in a place you don’t know, soaked in cold dew and frozen to the bones with something else.

 

There is a crack, and then finally Seamus is able to stumble away, face open and bleeding from the impact of Dean’s fist and his fingers twitch to strike one more time, because he didn’t intent to break an invisible bone but to bruise a black half-moon under his eye for the next week or two to prove that the boy isn’t a ghost and water would drown him too. Dean walks away before he can get a second hit in, which is the sort of boy his mother raised, which is the sort he doesn’t feel like he is, which is the sort that wouldn’t have punched another boy in the first place, what is the sort of boy that would have been an easy victim of that fucking war.

 

***

 

Seamus’ first attempt at doing the laundry had been in June, two weeks after they had first moved in, because he had been utterly fascinated by the washing machine and Dean had finally had enough of tripping over his legs as he sat on the kitchen floor watching it go round and round. After the disaster he made of it included two (muffled) explosions and the loss of three socks, Dean has made sure it’s been his only attempt. His second-favourite pair of jeans are still missing in action, which is why he’s got his bare knees covered in dust, looking in every corner and cranny trying to find them. It’s the height of summer and really much too hot for any Brit, but he can’t go sketching in the middle of the park half-naked. Just sitting in the garden won’t bring him near any face he could study to try and remember a smile, so the jeans are rather a necessity and all his other pairs are in the wash… maybe Seamus had a point about needing more than two outfits.

 

Sighing, Dean bends down to rifle through the bottom of the wardrobe and the pile of fallen clothes they keep promising each other that they will sort out and hang back up any day now. They keep rotating through the same two outfits every week because all their other clothes have been lost to the mess, or only go with items lost in the mess.

 

“Fuck,” he swears, realising just how much stuff is actually in the mess. “Shit!” as the hem of his pyjama bottoms catches on something and lands heavily on his ankle. “Ow! _Bollocks_ ,” he hisses. Glancing back round over his shoulder, he sees it’s the bottom drawer from Seamus’ bedside table, and carefully manoeuvres his foot free. His extremity thanks him profusely and he turns his attention back to the sartorial detritus- is that- yes! He sits uprights and pulls the jeans free, feeling like the Statue of Liberty.

 

Smiling the first smile of his own company and volition in a long while, Dean folds the jeans carefully and puts them on the bed before shuffling round on his arse and crawling two feet to put the drawer back. He doesn’t even originally intend to look at its contents- it’s Seamus’ side of the bed, after all- but his eyes sweep down there on instinct anyway as well as to replace it back in its nook easier and upon seeing it there he freezes. His wand is in there.

 

***

 

At a loss for what else to do, Dean tries to do some artwork. There’s a desperate gnawing at his heart that turns into a dog’s long howl whenever her leaves the bedroom for too long, so he runs for his sketchbook and returns to the bed. The dog starts quivering when his eyes wander to Seamus’ side of the bed, so he stares resolutely at just the four feet of bedspread and his sketchbook balanced on his knees he can see in front of him. Tries not to feel like he has been born condemned to a life always in the colours of mourning. A birthday suit is a burial suit too, he thinks people forget this, and his is the right colour for one but not the other.

 

Pushing his thoughts away with a heavy breath, he makes his pencil dance over the page. He hasn’t drawn Seamus in two years. He can’t watch Disney movies when he goes home for Sunday dinner unless his sisters fast-forward through the bit where it shows a picture of the pink castle. The last time he drew something of his own efforts that wasn’t a half-crazed dream or a frantic attempt at prayer; it twisted away from him and became a broken, dilapidated Hogwarts. Maybe how the muggles have always seen it, but also how it was after the battle. Dean turns his headto the side, away from his sketchbook and Seamus’ side of the bed both and breathes until he doesn’t want to throw up anymore. There wasn’t- there didn't- there was- nothing- absolutely nothing- just a – just _gone_ \- how can they- how could anyone- it’s disgusting- it’s heartbreaking- it’s- it’s not fair- it hurts, what happened- it hurt s it hurts it hurts it hurts. No consequences, no rubble, no destruction, no battleground. The remaining teachers gathered after the victory feast, waved their wands and the castle was almost entirely back to normal. Fixed.Mended.Repaired.Spotless. Normal. Dean had run away to the edge of the Forbidden Forest to cry and heave intermittently, and when Seamus came after him he had agreed that it was time for them to go. And just- _how could they just fix it like that?_ Why couldn’t they just fix him like that?

 

After his tears have drowned him, Dean realises he hasn’t drawn a single line. He hasn’t been able to in three weeks. Despite all the images he has in his head, he hasn’t been able to create one drawing. He’s in a drought, a well: empty of water and the pail abandoned long down in the dark. It feels like he is made of ash and dust. The village clock starts to toll. He has never seen the village clock. He loses count of how many times it has rung. One.Two. No more. It must be later than that, surely? Earlier? What time did he wake up, and when was his last meal? Has he eaten today or is he remembering the happenings of a different time because he’s too broken to start living again?

 

But not, even at Hogwarts, he would on occasion go to bed unable to remember if he had had for breakfast hours earlier. The days and years often bled into one long gloom, leaving him floundering and confused as he trod water towards seventh year.

 

Even when he and Seamus first- that had started to get complacent, too.

 

Dean thinks of everything he and Seamus have lost; the first time they said ‘I love you’, the first time they kissed, had sex, laughed, held hands, danced, talked, smiled at each other. He tries to make sense of that time and all he sees is grey walls and something green and insidious creeping closer and closer, and misery. So much fucking misery. The bedroom feels too small. On instinct Dean clambers off the bed and heads for the door, and his heart starts to yowl again. Long and loud like a stray dog. It doesn’t want to go anywhere near Seamus’ side of the bed, but he can’t leave it, he can’t leave it, much like his boyfriend himself, he can’t leave it. He wants to leave it he can’t leave it bastard!

 

With an angry snarl, Dean sweeps his sketchbook over to Seamus’ side of the bed and hurls himself down onto the mattress, stoking his bad temper up into a roaring fire to keep his heart warm. It risks burning his heart to ashes, but he’s not used it much lately, so it’s a risk he’s willing to take. The great halls inside his ribcage are freezing cold all the time now. A grave only needs to be six feet, but somehow he can’t stop digging himself deeper and deeper. All he feels these days is an angry depression, and if he’s going to be miserable he’s going to be the most miserable and _fuck_ anybody that tries to make him happy. Fuck them fuck them- see, his hands are moving, he’s drawing something, it’s working already.

 

Against the white paper, the inside of a toilet cubicle comes to life. Without even really properly thinking it, Dean knows it’s the middle of winter and the walls are cold as ice. One tiny chink of light pours from an open door, and highlights just a sliver of something that looks like a monster but is something much worse. A boy with pale skin; clammy and hair sticking to his neck. Blonde hair. Crying. Poison running through his veins and still on his tongue. Too small to see, but somewhere there Dean is certain he will be crying. Unbidden, his fingers take up the green pencil instead, and start to colour over everything in a shade that is either emerald or bile. He hears the wind gust briefly, and then the key in the front door. One single small detached part of him thinks before it can float away _not again_.

 

“Dean?!”

 

“Here!” it feels like a whisper except it brings the footfalls up the stairs anyway. Maybe a voice carries louder when there is no air in the house?

 

Seamus us coming up to their bedroom but his cough is coming first- walking pneumonia he’s been stubbornly passing off as a cold for the last fortnight, and as his boot hits the top stair he coughs again- wet and barking and Dean’s hands are trembling and he mustn’t let Seamus see else it will worry him and so he holds tight to his sketchbook instead. The door on the latch startles him- he didn't realise he was so close, and his fingers tear the paper and then, as the face is twisted into another thing he recognises exactly who the monster is and screams, screams from somewhere deep inside that’s all nightfall at the same moment as Seamus opens the door. Something explodes. He smells burning. Singed clothes. Fear. Anger. Worry. Fear- worry? There shouldn’t be worry why is- where is he- Seamus- Seamus is here- don’t let him see!- and Dean, with his last coherent thought of the day, rips the pages from his sketchbook and burns them in his hands.

 

***

 

When he comes to, there is a soft litany of noise going through his ears like a stream running over soft rocks. It takes him an undecipherable amount of time to come round to the words; to begin to put sounds and sense together again. “It’s alright, Dean, it’s alright, it’s alright now, shush-“over and over and over. It is a mercy he has only ever known in these arms: an indefinite amount of time to get his shit together again.

 

“What happened?” he croaks. He feels like a desert.

 

Seamus coughs before he answers. “You- I came upstairs and...”

 

“Just say it.”

 

“You were crying,” he whispers against the salt stains on Dean’s cheek. “And, angry too.Crying and angry.Tore your sketchbook into pieces and then-“he falters like glass breaking. Dean squeezes his eyes shut, the makes himself open them. Black spots dance away until he can see his boyfriend clearly.

 

“Then what?”

 

He has to watch him, he has to, he has to _see_. “I think- I couldn’t tell if you were upset or angry, but... magic went everywhere. Just, like an explosion, you know?” he tries for an unbalanced grin. “Thought I was the pyromaniac in this relationship?” Dean doesn’t laugh. It’s not funny.

 

“Oh.” It takes a long silence before he eventually knows how to finish the sentence. “I’m sorry? Did I hurt you.”

 

“Not me. Only your sketchbook.” His gaze follows Seamus’ downward to the paper scattered all over the room in snowflakes and ash.

 

“No, I mean- earlier.”

 

Seamus frowns, “What happened earlier?”

 

“But- don’t you- I- when I came- don’t you remember earlier?”

 

Confused, he shakes his head. Concern is creeping into his eyes. Concern. Fear. Worry. “Dean” he begins slowly. “I’ve been at work all day. What are you talking about?”

 

Slowly, Dean lets his eyes wander away and shakes his head in return. “It’s... nothing. I must have just dreamt it.”

 

Tentatively, Seamus tries his hand at grinning again. “Wow. Artist’s block must’ve really been getting to you, huh?”

 

His blood boils. “Stop it!”

 

His boyfriend recoils, “Stop what?”

 

“I’m sick of you treating me like I need to be locked up ina loony bin somewhere!”  The words don’t come out as angry as he intended them to. “I’m not mental, just. I’m just tired.”

 

“Okay.” He replies, reaching down past his arms without looking him in the eyes and pretending not to as he pulls the duvet up over them in spite of the weather. “Let’s go to sleep, then.”

 

“That’s it?” he’s surprised, and more surprised at how he apparently still has the capacity to feel surprised.

 

Seamus shrugs, “Well you’re tired, aren’t you? So am I- it’s been a long day.”

 

Dean nods, burying himself into Seamus’ neck by way of a ‘thank you’; glad he apparently managed to tear his artwork up before it could inspire Seamus into something Dean is too fearful to name. Against him, Seamus relaxes much the same way as he goes limp. Dean always lets Seamus look after him. It makes guilt start to gnaw at him: how often he doesn’t let Seamus look after him, how much he often doesn’t want his boyfriend to look after him. Cuddling him, he stretches his tiny frame as thin as he can to cover them as much as he can and Dean settles down further with tears for a pillow, but refuses to fall asleep.

 

***

 

The ticking of the clock nibbles away at the hours until the village clock tolls midnight. Dean exhales. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Ten. Twelve. He should, he knows, go to sleep. Or at least pretend to, so Seamus can get some rest. But Dean won’t, because he doesn’t trust himself not to give himself over to oblivion or keep quiet enough about it so as not to wake Seamus up and have to go through the parody of a picnic again. And Seamus won’t, because he can’t bear the idea of leaving him to the monsters scratching at the inside of his head. So they stay awake at this silent impasse, until Dean realises it’s a whole new day and understands what he wants his first words to be.

 

“Shay?” he whispers, right into his ear so he doesn’t have to be any louder than breathing. “I love you.”

 

“I love you too,” Seamus replies immediately. Dean exhales a little more. Shoulders slump a little further. Then, Seamus’ breathing hinges into a wheeze somewhere in the middle of his chest during his next sentence and he goes into a coughing fit against Dean’s chest. Cold air hits his skin and makes Dean shiver as Seamus draws his limbs in and covers his mouth, still hacking desperately and shaking fingers doing little to muffle the horrible sound.

 

Dean swears, hastily sitting upright and pulling the struggling boy with him. “’S alright,” he wheezes. Dean starts to rub circles on his back. “Honestly, Dean, ‘m alright. Don’t fuss.”

 

“Say that without coughing and I’ll believe you.”

 

More coughing racks him as if he is a boat on a stormy sea. Dean can’t tell if he will sink or not, but clinks on for dear life.

 

Will he save Seamus, or will they both go under.

 

He prays for the first, expects the inevitable.

 

Once it is finished, Seamus slumps against him and Dean doesn’t need to look down to know he looks tired. He huffs out a laugh.

 

“What is it?”

 

“Now we’re both missing out on our beauty _steep_.”

 

Seamus laughs, which was his goal. He coughs, which is his horror. “Maybe you should go to the doctor’s,” suggests Dean.

 

A hand waves the idea away, a pale pigeon flitting in his periphery. “Are we even registered with the one in the village?” A pause. “ _Is there_ even one in the village?”

 

“Maybe near the clock tower..?”

 

“Hmmm. I’ve never seen one, and there’s no need, anyway. ‘S just... hay fever.”

 

“Pneumonia.”

 

“Hay fever.”

 

“Pneumonia.”

 

“Dick.”

 

“Prick,” Seamus laughs again; it doesn’t turn into a coughing fit but only because it hardly grows to mote strength than a wheeze. Suddenly overcome with unfamiliar tenderness, Dean drops a kiss to the top of his head. It is hardly the worst thing to come down with: there’s no fever, or fatigue, or any fucking thing wrong except for the damn cough. Dean is starting to avoid coming to bed because he can’t stand to hear it. Seamus sags against him further. “D’you want me to sleep on the sofa?” he asks in a sleepy mumble. Dean knows him well enough to know he’ll have his eyes closed. Shuttered little half moons of pale skin, floating over bruised purple seas of tiredness.

 

The sofa is _Dean’s_.

 

He holds him tighter. “No.”

 

The subtle shift in position makes him cough again. Dean would count them in the same vein as mugs and clock chimes and bruises, but he would lose count, he fears. “It’s okay. And- I’ve got to go into town tomorrow, anyway. Do you like the red or yellow cough syrup better?”

 

His nose crinkles in distaste. Perhaps _before_ Dean would have thought it was cute. “Neither.”

 

“Stop sneaking all those cigarettes then, you might get better.”

 

“Hmph.” His arms reach further around his waist. Dean breathes in. There’s no specific scent like in the movies and the novels, nothing except maybe the tiniest faint whiff of sweat and cigarettes and day-old shampoo. He read somewhere once that human survival instinct tunes out the familiar smell of home.

 

“I’ll think about it.” His lip twitches in something that is scarily reminiscent of a grin.

 

The night ticks on, they slump further into each other, their breathing evening out. Dean is just starting to believe that they may both actually find something akin to rest in the scant hours before sunrise when a thought suddenly comes into his head on the tail-end of a particularly loud wheeze. _Sea air_. Like a Victorian quack. All the same, he shifts and subtly as he can nudges his boyfriend back towards wakefulness. “So,” Dean starts carefully, as if it is no big deal. “Did you ever ask at work about getting some time off to go on holiday?”

 

***

XIX.

 

_Saturday 3 rd January 1998_

 

He is screaming until there is soil in his mouth, then he’s choking. Scabior and Greyback loom over him- if the situation wasn’t so dire, he could see right up their robes. Now there is only night sky and soil falling like rain. The ground is cold and his ankle is throbbing- he twisted it running. It snapped underneath him like a branch falling from a tree. He thinks maybe he could have made it, if not for that. There is soil on their robes and under their nails- they dug his grave the muggle way, the better way to drag out as he watched: trussed up with ropes made of fire and magic. One of them tied Ted’s scarf around his mouth when he wouldn’t stop screaming for help. It’s gone now. It smelt of Ted. He wishes he could have kept hold of it.

 

When they caught them, Dean tried to apparate away, but they threw up charms and all he could do was pirouettes instead of step, like Ernie Macmillian learning to apparate, or a monkey dancing in the circus. For a long time, there is nothing but the night turning on and first against the shovel.

 

When it is dawn and they still have not covered him, they give it up. He gasps as they apparate away and the ties around him unbind. More soil gets into his mouth. Pain floods into freed skin. He scrambles over the edge up onto yet more soil as the sun casts afternoon shadows. Once he can stand again, he goes back to the camp where Ted is still dead, because all of their things are there and he’s got nowhere else to go.

 

***

 

XX.

 

_Monday 4 th May 1998_

 

The Snatchers, he learned later in Malfoy Manor, often stalked their pray. They let people go several times before finally dragging them to the house of horrors kicking and screaming.

 

“And I’ve told you about what happened after Dobby rescued us, haven’t I?” Dean asks Seamus, so tired he can hardly keep his eyes open. Seamus nods and doesn’t let go of his hand. These death eaters weren’t very good at their jobs, seeing as they’re both here and not dead.

 

It’s a joke for another time.

 

***

 

XXI.

 

_Friday 21 st August 1998_

 

Seamus coughs as soon as he gets in the door. He doesn’t even get in the front door- Dean spends an inordinate amount of time listening for his keys in the lock until he realises it isn’t coming and races into the hall. Unlocks the front door himself and spills out onto the garden path like deer guts on the motorway. Seamus is bent over his knees and coughing desperately. Someday his blood will come up and water the flowers.

 

“’M alright,” Seamus wheezes out terribly. “Was just- dusty at work.” He chokes off into coughing again and it sounds raw and bloody and terrible. Dean puts his arms round his shoulders and guides him inside. Locks the door. Kisses the top of his head just as soon as he stops hacking. Doesn’t mention how Seamus takes the bottle of cough syrup from the kitchen cupboard of his own volition. Makes tea.

 

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. He exhales. “How was work?”

 

“It was- yeah, it was alright.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Oh- and, you know you wanted to go on holiday? Well, I managed to ask Kingsley about it and I’ve got some time off next week.”

 

***

 

XXII.

 

_Saturday 22 nd August 1998_

 

“Dean?” Seamus leans close enough his breath hits his cheek. He imagines snow falling on black tarmac.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Have you seen the bloody ticket prices?”

 

“Um, no- wait- _Christ_.”

 

His lip disappears between his teeth as he tries to read the timetable and walk simultaneously. “Why is it so expensive?”

 

He tries to cast his mind back to the cloud of memories storied from the last time he went home for tea. “Um... I think London prices are expensive. Or so Mum says.”

 

Seamus blows a raspberry and grins at the dirty look a passerby shoots them. Dean ducks his head and pretends not to have seen. It’s easier than having to smile. “Dean,” his voice turns low and thrilling and he leans _even closer_ , a grin on his face that sends _something_ right through Dean’s guts. “How about I confund the train conductor?”

 

“Seamus!” he replies in a scandalised hiss. “No!”

 

“Seamus! Yes!”

 

“How are you going to confund him, anyway? You haven’t got your wand.”

 

He rustles in his sleeves and the look in his eyes glints in a way that Dean recognises on other people’s faces. “I don’t need one.”

 

Did Seamus ever get good marks for wordless charms? Because Dean can’t rem- he stops thinking about it. The gap in their time together is like the hollows between his ribs: Seamus’ fingers fit over them now. At least, he concedes, Seamus didn't bring his wand on holiday. The thought makes him feel a little better. London prices _are_ extortionate... “Just don’t get caught!” he snaps. It doesn’t seem too bad of an idea when Seamus beams at him and drags him by the hand through the train station and onto the platform. Half an hour past departure, the conductor asks for tickets and gets misty-eyed whenever he passes by their seat. Dean feels terrible and guilty and happy as a teenager all at the same time.

 

***

 

It’s late when they burst through the door of the holiday flat that is theirs for next two weeks, later still when Dean drags them out for a walk, but not so late the sun has gone down, because neither of them are good in the dark despite their old teenage fumbling often taking place in the pitch black. His life feels like he’s constantly ate for a train- half frantically trying to catch up, half bitter acceptance. Slim hopes another may arrive soon. He clutches Seamus; hand and breathes in pink, salty air. The waves are rushing and lapping the beach as the tide comes in; they are a stream in a river of people also enjoying the evening sun and- some muggle boys are holding hands. They pass each other opposite ways and pretend not to notice the other couple’s staring. Dean feels his shoulders lower just a fraction of an inch more.

 

“It’s nice here,” he murmurs in lieu of what he wants to say. Will Seamus-

 

“Yeah,” Seamus agrees with a quiet smile. “It is.” Yes, Seamus does. Dean loves him.

 

They walk on, holding hands. Not the muggle word, the _normal_ world. They are normal people who haven’t been- no more than anyone else, anyway. Dean did not have to survive the last year to know there is more than one type of war. Some rage inside you. Some your heart wage against your ribs and every battle is an attempt to escape. Maybe one time he came from a culture that told with their mouths stories about how upon dying your heart can finally escape you and every breath you are gifted is a result of the war your heart wages every day to flee you, but his mother scrubbed floor s and his grandmother scrubbed floors and his great grandmother and in amongst all of this it must have been washed away.

 

 _Fwoom- fwoom- fwoom_.

 

The waves hit the sea wall below. Blue and pink and purple and sparkling here and there. Warmth spreads up his right hand side as Seamus moves closer. It’s warm and they’d both be in t-shirts two years ago. Now they cover their arms with long sleeves and light jackets that rustle in the salt breeze. A child runs past, chased and screaming and Dean feels them both flinch. They don’t unfreeze even when they see the parents pass, smiling and unconcerned. Red eaves poke over the houses and peer down at them and music tinnys from the arcades that spring up after seemingly every other shop. At noon, it’s so hot and sunny that the sky just looks a pure, unadulterated expanse of white; it feels as if there’s a pair of net curtains over everything- slicing reality and softening it and casting a soft yellow golden glow. It makes it easier. Makes breathing easier. Softens his lungs and makes the oxygen easier to swallow down. Living doesn’t seem so hard, here, when the sea can replace his heartbeats and fill his ribcage so completely he will never experience emptiness again. For the first time the salt on his tongue is from a good place. He does not feel, for the first time in a very long time, as if his life is a thing that has already been done to death.

 

Seagulls and waves battle to sound the loudest. The caws and the

_fwoom-fwoom- fwoom_

 

crack apart the sky; earlier they brought pink and white sticks of rock and Seamus delighted at seeing the yellow sun indeed running the whole way through. Dying sun rays peeks through the pinking clouds and hit his eyes and Dean’s blinking away stars as he nudges Seamus in the ribs with his elbow.

 

“Have you ever made sandcastles?” he bites down on nothing, but he can taste the grit, peppermint rock, pink candyfloss, sweet vanilla ice cream and Seamus smiling around a _Ninety nine_ chocolate flake _._

 

The question garners a bemused frown and a quirked eyebrow. “No. What are they?”

 

“Castles made out of sand,” he grins in reply. “Oi- you asked!” he giggles. He feels light. Cloud like. Cloudy. _Good_.

 

“You’ll have to show me how to make them on Monday.”

 

Monday? Why not tomorrow- why not right now- as soon as possibly- why not tomorrow- he has to go back home for dinner tomorrow.

 

Why isn’t Seamus his home?

 

Said boyfriend brings him out of his mind. “You could bring your sisters down here on one of these days, maybe? I bet Daisy would love it here.”

 

“They would all knock your sandcastles down and bury you up to your neck.”

 

“You’d just have to rescue me, then, won’t you?”

 

He giggles again feeling like the soft yellow sky is pulling a neverending stream of happiness out of him. “Daisy would flick water on me and chase me off so Daphne and Delilah could carry on tormenting you.” The huff of laughter mingles with the lukewarm breeze and warms him some more. Warms him all the way down to his toes.

 

“What time are you going to your Mam’s tomorrow?” the question is abrupt, laced with poison, and the hand in his is clenched tightly into a fist.

 

“Um. I dunno. Maybe about two-ish. It depends on the buses. Why?”

 

“Just... wondering.”

 

“No. Tell me.” Neither of them have regained enough weight for Seamus not to look all skull when he ducks his head down; he’s tanning in the summer sun, making the scar across his nose appear even lighter. Sometimes when Dean moves too quickly he mistakes it for a knife.

 

“Just... was wondering how long I was going to be on me own is all.” He shrugs and gathers his shoulders around his cheeks and refuses to look up from the ground. Sand is under their feet even though they’re on the pavement.Scattered grains like stars or tiny, tiny suns. Every single one of them is stuck in Dean’s throat.

 

“Oh.”

 

“I mean- don’t stay just ‘cuz…it’s _fine_. I just... ‘s a bit easier when I know, you know?”

 

“Oh.” In a better life, Seamus would have a better boyfriend. One who thinks about these things and remembers these things and wouldn’t be only able to say ‘oh’ even if he didn’t. He wants to tear his clammy hand away, except Seamus is holding on too desperately. He closes his eyes instead, tasting the sea and reminding himself of how uncannily this place resembles his sisters’ _Polly Pocket_ toys.

 

“I- uh- it shouldn’t take very long. It’s only going to be a normal dinner. I’ll probably be back even before six.”

 

“Okay. That’s fine. That’s- I’ll be fine, Dean, will you just stop looking at me like that?”

 

The tragedy is, neither of them have ever lived a life where their anger can grow louder than a kiss. Biting down on anger lest it brings that of other’s down on them. They have been robbed.

 

“Sorry,” Dean isn’t feeling very sorry. More angry.Jealous.Three months ago, Seamus forced himself not to need his boyfriend in the same room all the time, and now look at him: perfectly healthy but for the anxiety Dean tastes when they kiss after he comes home from work. Healthier than Dean is. Certainly better. Maybe it’s all the sleep he steals?

 

He squeezes Seamus’ hand to feel the bones. “Sorry.”

 

“’S okay.” He mumbles. “’S my fault. I shouldn’t’ve gotten angry.”

 

“You didn’t get angry.”

 

A grin starts to edge up his mouth and he dares glance upward, “Are we arguing about if we just had an argument or not?”

 

“It’s not arguing.” Dean stops walking and leans on the railings. “I’m right.”

 

Laughter peels out of his small ribcage. “Okay,” he replies, breathless and golden. “You’re right. You’re always right. Now- tell me more about sandcastles. And things. What else are you meant to do at the seaside?”

 

“Um.Sandcastles. And- and ice cream? Paddling in the sea. Sunbathing. Uh- and- and fish and chips and sometimes donkey rides, but I think you’d be too heavy for the poor donkey.” He squawks in protest and- “Oh my God, you sound like a fucking seagull.” They end up in a loud, rowdy chase down the pier; his long legs giving him the advantage but he’s laughing so much the other boy has no problems catching up and tackling him to the ground.

 

***

 

“You going to bed?”

 

“In a minute,” and is he- yes he is- fucking _idiot_.

 

“Seamus Finnigan if I find out you’re smoking with pneumonia then I swear I’ll-“

 

“What? Spank me?”

 

“ _Seamus!”_ his screech is accompanied by a splash as he sits up in the bath, scandalised, and outside the door Seamus howls with laughter until it dissolves into more of that horrendous coughing Dean often mistakes for choking, and it doesn’t stop. “Shay?” he calls, clutching at the edge of the bathtub, second away from getting out to help him when the noise at last begins to peter out.

 

“Stop fussing, ‘m fine,” he scoffs. “Just, jus’... let me go get a drink.”

 

Dean gingerly sinks back into the tub,movement punctuated by the retreating footsteps. The water ripples from how he’s shivering. Dean tries to breathe- they’re not at war now they’re fine. Everything’s fine.

 

When he goes into the kitchen later the whole flat will smell of cigarettes.

 

 _I bet he’s charmed the flat in case of death eaters_.

 

The thought horrifies him into stillness. _He’d have to have brought his wand_. All of a sudden, Dean feels horribly, terribly dirty. He takes the nail brush and scrubs at his skin in a bid to get clean, growing confused as his skin doesn’t start to flush pink from the abuse until he remembers he is a black hole.

 

***

 

XXIII.

 

_Sunday 23 rd August 1998_

 

Dean sneaks into the bedroom at five in the morning and pretends he’s been there all night. Rolling over, their shoulders brush together and he stops. Confused. It’s too hot under the covers. Too hot even for summer in July with a duvet.  He sneaks his hands up to press it against the check not crushed into the pillow (the position is squishing his mouth into an expression Dean can’t fucking stand) and is met with a burning dry heat like a summer’s day with no merciful breeze. He frown at the same time the contact stirs Seamus into wakefulness and Dean shoves himself up onto his elbows to frown down at him sternly. His boyfriend is a wilting lily on the bed below him, and his expression only grows unhappier when the first thing he sees today is Dean.

 

“Wha..?” his voice creaks and send him into a coughing fit.

 

 Dean waits until he’s finished and then says, “You should sleep some more, Shay.”

 

He stirs more, as if he’s being deliberately contrary, “What- Dean- _no_...” his eyes flicker from side to side. Two.Three.Four.Five. Si- “That’s what muggles- what happens on sick days. Sick people need rest, Seamus. You need to _rest_.”

 

Seamus turns his back on him and sleeps whilst his boyfriend envies him

 

***

 

Ferring is a beautifully typical seaside town, and where every normal person has holidayed at least once in their lives and it makes Dean feel a tiny bit better. It is cold, for summer, but everyone is still splashing in the sea and exposed all the same. Or they do when the clock strikes a reasonable hour. He leaves the flat mere minutes after it announces five in the morning, and the streets are as empty as veins without having Seamus there..

 

It would be cold and only slightly less empty with Seamus there, who is he kidding?? Why are they here, for Merlin’s- God’s- _fuck’s_ sake?

 

On his back his rucksack trembles with every step he stumbles down towards the beach barefooted- Hermione gave him a list printed out from something called a ‘computer’, another thing he’s missed. It tells him how to feel again in the same tone Madame Pince addressed students and insects. _Walk about barefoot and feel every step._

 

When Dean arrives at the beach, sand gets in his cuts.

 

***

 

Once the beach has run out, he clambers all the way back onto the boardwalk; slowly  and steadily like antenna feeling for danger and takes his rucksack off his back, only to put it straight back on his shoulders again once emptied. Settling into an inconspicuous, out of the way place where he is allowed to stay, Dean scans the faces that go streaming past in-between the horizon line and the top of his (new) sketchbook and searches for happiness. A happy woman. A happy girl. A normal girl. Ariana, who was more than a man’s grief. He can’t find anyone. Really, the fact that everyone is as miserable-looking as he is feeling should dull the loneliness. In reality, it makes him feel surprisingly alone.

 

 _How do I know none of these people are wizards?_ He doesn’t, Dean realises. Only that he doesn’t _want_ to know, and that is going to have to be the same thing.

 

The teenagers and children that pass by look at him strangely. _Hey_ , he wants to say _you’re up early too_. Dean is shocked he’s still recognisable as only eighteen, the way that his bones crack.

 

Words he doesn’t recognize babble pass him on a string of vivid bright future from the mouths of babes. His sisters speak from similar mouths every time he goes home. A balloon comes to life between two half-finished faces with no eyes or noses; with every shining word the knife separates two rib bones further apart and allows the balloon to fly a little further away.  Grow a little bit smaller. How long, how long until it is no longer distinguishable than a pinprick of blood? How long until his wounds scar over and the door to one world shuts? Which would does he want to close to him? His first one, his ordinary one, his familial one, his bade one, his mother’s one? His second one, his impossible one, his war one, his scarred one, Seamus’ one?

 

Dean no longer cares. So long as he has learnt to be content with what he has by the time the door closes; so long as his heart has crumbled and crushed the emptiness. Downsized so it has just enough room and no empty, spare bedroom, this is all he wants. He is too traumatized for the wizarding world,too strange for the muggle world. Belonging is a mercy he has found in Seamus’ arms alone and there is no helping him.

 

Once upon a time, Dean wished for a love from which he never recovered. That would change him radically and make him if not happy at least worldly.

 

Once upon a time, the Dark Lord loved pure-blooded wizards and witches very, very much,

 

_Mum was right. Be careful what you wish for._

 

***

 

“’Re you goin’ now?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Right.” A body turns over and goes back to sleep on its modest pillow. “Do you need anything before I go?... Seamus? ... Seamus!...Fine. Suit yourself.” He is halfway through apparating when he remembers _not_ to and pulls himself back. The abortion unsettles him. Rocking a boat about too much. Nothing ever getting the chance to settle into place again before it is thrown to the other side of the room once more. He nearly runs for the bus when hen he remembers _not_ to, and misses it. Waits twenty minutes alone and suspicious-looking for the next one, feeling the sun on his skin but not feeling warm.

 

***

 

“Dean!” Daisy and Daphne and Delilah swarm and jump all over him as soon as he unlocks the door and he tenses as he is brought down to the floor but they do not notice.

 

“Hello,” Dean gasps out in the scant few seconds there is not an elbow in his ribs.

 

“Girls!” his mother comes out with the kitchen with wafting smells of food and a teatowel. “What have I told you about jumping on people?”

 

“Dean doesn’t mind, do you Dean?” that’s Delilah, the youngest, he has to remind himself.

 

“No,” he says, beseeched by three pairs of big brown eyes. “I don’t mind, Mum. Hello.”

 

“Hmph,” she replies, wading amidst her sea of daughters to hug him- she hugs him every time he comes home, now.  Thirteen hugs, now. One for every Sunday dinner he has come home for and leaves hungry and halfempty. The kiss he gets is new; soft and lukewarm as if a butterfly settled on him for a brief respite before flying off again. “It’s good to see you.”

 

“You too.” This is the job of a mother: she never asks you to mean the words you say.

 

***

 

“Where have you been?” Dad asks from his armchair. The telly is humming out a football game, which makes the whole thing a lot easier and which he thinks is his Dad’s way of saying ‘I love you’.

 

“On holiday,” Dean answers automatically, not thinking as he tries to keep all three siblings from sliding off his knees. He’s finally warm, covered in three bodies. “On- well, uh, still am. On holiday, I came from Ferring. Me and Seamus are on holiday.”

 

“You said ‘holiday’ three times,” Daphne informs him very seriously.

 

 

He cracks his face open to grin at her. “Will you forgive me if I give you a stick of rock?”

 

Immediately, the stern face is gone and the tide comes rushing in in the form of three excitable children. Laughing, Dean pulls the three candies from his pocket and lets them be snatched from his fingers. “Look- mum, look they’ve got our names on!” Daphne shouts, and she and Delilah go running to the kitchen to prove it, leaving just Dean and Daisy and Dad. Somehow, Dean doesn’t think now is the time to tell them he got one for each parent, too. So no one would miss out.

 

Hearing exhales settle over the men in the room, Daisy slides off his knee to sit on the floor next to the sofa and peer up at them- she’s the eldest, but even she can’t understand what words big silences hold. Dean blinks, wait- no- _I’m the eldest_.

 

His Dad makes a low, grating noise to bring time back to the present. “Where’s Ferring?” he asks gruffly. The pages of newspaper rustle on his lap.

 

Dean blinks. Inhales. “Down south. Near- near Brighton.”

 

“When’d you go there?”

 

“Yesterday. It’s one of those summer deals. We're staying for two weeks.”

 

“Until the fifth?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Ah.”

 

Dean exhales. Angry, not angry, Dad isn’t angry or at least not with him or anymore than he should be. Just sorrowful. Which is fine: Dean can escape sorrowful. It’s merely a question of distracting an old man from the fat that the boy who is not his son or nineteen yet can afford to go on a two week holiday and has more comfort than he can afford after working for thirty years without reprieve. Part of Dean’s heart- a stupid part- wants to explain that it’s just that he got lucky with commissions and the whole culture of aristocracy that’s become inextricable from wizardry and Dean fully intends to pay back every penny they had to convert to Galleons to buy the Hogwarts robes he outgrew every year and he’s sorry he didn't learn enough in Transfiguration to save them the expense. Really sorry. The other part- the sensible part, or the survivalist part, which yanks blood in and throws it out viciously with an appetite for life long since vanished from him- holds his mouth shut.

 

“Dinner’s ready!” Mum shouts. Followed by, “ _No_ , Daisy, you aren’t eating your sweets now! Wait until you’ve had your dinner!”

 

Dean follows his father into the other room. Standing, their joints creak about the same. He leaves the other two sticks of rock on the coffee table.

 

***

 

“When is Seamus going to come for tea?” Delilah brings the whole table to a standstill.

 

“When he’s better.” Dean says without thinking.

 

His mother turns to him with concern in every crease of her face. (There are too many lines on her face. Did she look the same a year ago? Maybe tucked in a drawer somewhere is a picture he did of her- the fact she never stuck them on the fridge but kept them out of harm’s way used to be some sort of victory and an unconditional source of pride. All the pictures Dent took with him burnt. Some in battle, rending Seamus’ year of effort futile. Some by his own hand, in the winter. For warmth. Kindling. Of the two ends, he can’t work out which is the greater tragedy.) “You didn't mention he was sick.”

 

His eyes will not look up from his plate. His arse hurts as he shuffles in his seat, feeling for the first time in a long time Daisy’s age again.  “’S just a bug. He’s fine.” There’s a pause. “He, uh, he was wondering if maybe you wanted me to take the girls to the seaside for a day. Before they have to go back to school.”

 

The air leaves the room.

 

Despite being born with dark and empty hands, none of them would rather eat humiliation. After two hundred and sixty nine night lying sleepless from hunger and ninety six from fear, though, Dean is starting to come round a little.

 

Delilah wrenches round in her seat and begins to beg. “Please, Mum, can we, can we, _please_!”

 

Daphne and Daisy add to the tide and pitch their own cries, begging to be allowed to go either to the seaside or somewhere alone without proper adults, Dean can’t tell.

 

“Maybe when Seamus is better.” Mum draws herself up too tall to hear any arguments. “Now if all three of you are finished, why don’t you go and play in the living room?”

 

They do not need to be told twice. After they are gone,their talk drifts in through the thin walls. Dad leans back in his chair and shits the door. Once it is closed, Dean misses Seamus more than ever. “What is it?” He asks. He tries- he does- he _tries_ to look up at his mother, but the _look on her face_. He looks down again, engrossed by the yellow pattern that has decorated the edges of their plates for twenty years without him noticing. It’s a nice pattern. A pretty pattern.A calm pattern.

 

“Dean,” Mum begins softly. “We’re... worried about you.”

 

_You should talk to Seamus. You’d get along really well._

 

“What she means is,” Dad interjects gruffly,  “is every time we see you, you don’t look... happy.”

 

Dean hates himself for the hesitation in his voice. He’ll hate himself forever. His Dad is steady and sturdy and been beaten into place and tearless for thirty years and Dean- Dean’s hurt him. He’s so, so sorry.

 

“You’re not- I mean, just look at you, sweetie,” Mum is saying. “And I know you don’t like to talk about- what happened and where you went, but we’re worried about you.”

 

“I’m fine.”

 

“Are you?” Dad asks. _No_.

 

“Yeah. Just, uh- I’ve been trying to work out how to tell you something.”

 

“What is it?” Dad asks.

 

His Mum scoots her chair forward and puts a hand on his arm. It burns. Like a brand. “I, uh, I’ve been- it’s- I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and Luna- I told you about Luna, right?”

 

Dad nods. Mum gives him an encouraging smile and rubs his shoulder. “She’s your friend from school, right?”

 

“Yeah, and, uh- she- she told me about it- all these different words, for things and... I think I might be... bisexual?”

 

“What’s that mean?”

 

“So, I’m dating Seamus and I like boys, but... I like girls, too?”

 

Dad shrugs, “Okay.”

 

It seems like it requires a response from him, “Yeah?”

 

“Of course it’s okay!” suddenly, he is enveloped in a strangle-tight hug. Mum. Without meaning to and also meaning to, Dean freezes. “Oh- oh, I’m sorry” and it’s a testament to her as a person- mother- woman- that she immediately tries to stop touching him and move away.

 

Dean forces himself to relax. It takes almost as much effort as running. She’s his mother, he _has_ to give her this. “No. It’s- its okay. You can... carry on.” More tentative this time, she resumes hugging him. After a brief deliberation, Dad walks round the other side of the table and joins in. It feels tight and warm and choking.

_At least_ , he tries to justify to himself, _it’s the same way with Seamus_. That has to be a good thing, right? It must mean _something_. The same way he didn't just tell them what was wrong but at least told them _something_.

“Did you think we wouldn’t we would-“Dad flounders, helpless. _Something_ twinges in Dean’s ribs. _I did that._

 

“You’re our son,” Mum finishes calmly, sitting back and wiping her face and then his. He starts, he hasn’t even realised he was crying. “We love you no matter what and no matter who you love Dean, alright?”

 

Slowly, Dean nods. Up above their heads somewhere, Dad grunts. “Seamus isn’t a bad choice of boyfriend.” Dean nods again. Feels- he feels shell-shocked. Frozen. That’s that, then. Mum kisses him once more, and then starts to clear the table. Dad limps over to the sink and turns the tap on and fills the washing up bowl with bubbles. Dean slips out of his chair and goes to find his old bedroom.

 

***

 

Daisy has claimed his old room three weeks ago, citing her rights as now-eldest to have privacy in a flat that knows little meaning of the luxury. In two plastic boxes in the corner is the contents of his life that he did not need a year ago, three months ago, that Daisy did not need three weeks ago but that Mum was thoughtful enough to save, thinking Dean might like to go through it and see if he needs anything.

 

Plundering a grave of its contents isn’t Dean’s ideal Sunday evening, but it’s that or talking to his family.  He closes the door, drops to his knees, and starts to dig.

 

The smell of the carpet is foreign to his senses; another country or a foreign land and surely it can’t be the same smell that welcome him home for seventeen years before this, can it? Surely surely surely?

 

Whichever way he squints under his eyes, the room doesn’t look right. The cream walls, dirty ceiling, old carpet, even the bed are all the same as they were three weeks- months- years- decades- ago, yet something in here feels _off_ to him. As if an atypical burglar came along and moved everything an inch to the left and stole all the air from the room before opening the window to escape again.

 

The contents of the two boxes are paltry, to say the least. Clothes that were out of fashion evenwhen he got them from the charity shop. Two _Pokémon_ cards, a scrunchie lost from Daisy’s or Daphne’s or Delilah’s wrist. A photo album he doesn’t look through before shoving into his bag. Essays and broken biros and bad or average grades from _every_ school- half empty books of matches- two videos he’s been renting since 1996- takes them for Seamus, he’ll like _Alien_.- _Thomas the Tank and Friends_ \- headless Action Man- a str- there’s a sketchbook at the bottom. Everything else falls onto the floor in a crashing wave as Dean rips the precious treasure from its entombment. Flipping through reverently, he makes a noise too dry to be a sob, too sad to be anything else.

 

 _Dean Thomas. Second Year. Gryffindor_.

 

On its pages is sketch after sketch of happy faces. “It’s alright, Ariana,” he says aloud without meaning to- possibly the holiest and kindest he has ever been when on his knees. “It’s alright, Ariana, it’s alright now.”

 

“Who’s Ariana?” he flinches. The sketchbook falls to the carpet and closes. Daphne is peering at the door.

 

“No one,” he croaks, remembering at last how to speak.

 

“Does Daisy know you’re in her room?”

 

“Daisy should be happy I’m taking my stuff out of her room.”

 

There’s silence as she ponders his excuse. “Will you and Seamus _really_ take us to the beach one day?” she asks, looking far more doubtful than any nine year old should.

 

“If Mum lets me, yeah. Why?”

 

She shrugs, chewing at her lip. It occurs to Dean then that her feet should probably still fit into the _Barbie_ trainers she got when she was five, and he should have thought to come home and look at his sisters if he wanted to find some happy faces.

 

It wouldn’t have worked, though. They can’t be happy when he’s here. He’s the gravedigger who keeps shovelling the soil onto the coffin even when it turns out the thing is still alive. For a second, he almost wants to apologize- to all of them, but they’ll ask him what he is apologizing for and that’s an entity they can’t let him continue to its end.

 

This refusal to accept the need for an apology over a scorched patch of earth that is entirely the fault of one person is what keeps families together.

 

Daphne shifts and shuffles her feet and hangs off the doorframe until she slips down closer to the floor a few centimetres. “Didn’t think you really meant it. Daisy and Delilah didn’t neither, but they’re too scaredy-cats to come and ask with me.”

 

“Oh.” Disappointment flooding over her face is the only thing that gets him to say something else. “Why didn’t you think I really meant it?”

 

Daphne shrugs again, “Because you aren’t how you used to be. Even Delilah says so, and she was only five last year.”

 

“No.” Dean finds himself agreeing before he can stop himself and think about the consequences. “I’m not the same.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because… because I had to go way.”

 

“Did you miss us?”

 

 _I miss not being haunted_. “Of course I did. Just like you missed me.”

 

“Mmm. Dad doesn’t do all the funny voices when he reads stories. And now you don’t read us any stories ever. What did you do when you went away?”

 

“Well. Ran, mostly.Though I saw a dragon, once.”

 

“Running?” she tilts her head to the side the same way Mum does, he does, Daisy does, Delilah does. One clear line right the way back through time. It makes him feel a bit better. “Is that all?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Why’d you have to go away just to do running? You can do that here- I see people run past my school all the time.”

 

That’s because her school is in a neighbourhood where people can practise for marathons. On their estate, running means you are being chased. “It’s a special sort of magic thing.”

 

“You don’t never do magic- I don’t think it’s real.”

 

“Sometimes I wish it wasn’t.” At one time this would have been a confession but now his voice is too leaden.

 

The head tilt again, “Why?”

 

“I don’t like telling you things when you don’t believe them.”

 

“Oh. Will Daisy have to go away and do running when she’s older?”

 

“No. Just me.”

 

“Is it because you’re a boy?”

 

“No. Because I’m a wizard.”

 

Her nose screws up, “I still don’t believe you.”

 

“That’s okay. But you won’t have to go away. Or Daisy. Or Delilah. Not unless you want to.”

 

“I’ll never want to,” she declares, half pouting and half stroppy, all precocious and curls. “It made you sad.”

 

The idea brings a smile to Dean’s face. “Well I’m not sad now, am I?”

 

“No,” she shakes her head and bites her lip. It’s pink from the stick of rock she snuck behind Mum’s back. “And you’re definitely going to take us to the seaside?”

 

“If Mum says yes,” Dean promises.

 

Daphne’s eyes twinkle, “She will.”

 

***

 

They are both tired and drunk- drinking because they are tired of tea, because the beer will go out of date soon, because adults drink, because drinking is how fathers bond with their sons, Mum explains when Dean asks. _I’m not your son_ , he thinks. Thankfully, he has not drunk enough to say so aloud. Mum and Dad sit at opposite ends of the kitchen table with two children on either side between them and the girls leave to go and play and Dean is left alone. This is how it has always been for him: cycling between which girl sits next to him at each mealtime, but his own place never changing because he is the thorn in his mother’s side. Mum gets up and leaves for somewhere. There have been times when Dean’s feared she will go the same as his real dad.

 

“Dad?” he ventures. Receives a grunt in return.

 

“What is it like, fancying someone?”

 

Their eyes meet. He puts the paper down on the table. Says bluntly he doesn’t care if Dean likes blokes. And then Dan says, “I like both.”

 

Dad blinks- it is only the alcohol making him tired, in this time. “Well, that’s alright too, then, isn’t it?"

 

“ _Is_ it?”

 

“If you’re happy with it, son.”

 

“I’m a freak.” The tears are bitter in his mouth, collecting extra from his father’s well of apathy as they sluice down his face. Which father? He bursts into tears.

 

“Oh, for-“he passes him a handkerchief. “There’s six billion people in the world now, son,” Dad tells him very seriously, prodding his finger at the headline for emphasis. “You’re not special- there’s bound to be others like you.”

 

Dean nods, unable to tell if he is crying. “Okay.”

 

***

 

He lets his head rattle against the bus window. It’s not peaceful like it is in the movies. It feels like it’s trying to shake his brain out of his skull. He thinks maybe he liked his imagined scenario better.

 

***

 

“Hello.” A bleary mumble creeps from behind him.

 

Dean twitches, but in the end keeps his eyes locked on the television where twenty two grown men earn enough to want for nothing just by kicking a ball around for two hours a week.  “Hello.”

 

“How was dinner?” Seamus stumbles tiredly round the sofa and falls onto the cushions, clutching the duvet around him like a cape. There’s a cigarette tucked behind his ear and one missing from his pocket on the coffee table and Dean counts the cigarettes instead of looking his boyfriend in the eyes.

 

“Dinner was good. Mum says ‘hello’.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Oh.”

 

They let the television fall between them. Dean closes his eyes and tries not to think of the times when love was so easy. Shivers make their way up Seamus’ elbows, so going for a walk is off the table. “How are you feeling?”

 

The Irish boy waves the question away, “Fine. ‘M fine. Just tired.” _Did I wake you up?_ He wants Seamus to go back to bed. He is ill and Dean wants to switch the TV to whitenoise and crackling snow. Refuge is meant to be sacrosanct, is it not?.

 

Coughing can’t be contained by one bony hand and Dean turns away even as his arm extends to rub his back. It arches away from his touch. “’M fine.”

 

“Okay.” He can see his sketchbook, peeking out of his rucksack, but he’s not in the mood now; twitching moves his fingers like death throes and he’s vowed not to paint or draw another thing until Ariana Dumbledore is laid to rest in the grave of his mouth. _One day_ , he vows, _one day soon_. “I picked up some of my old things when I went home.” A freezing cold breeze meets his fingers when he puts some distance between the two of them on the couch to rifle through his bag, but it serves Seamus right. “Here-“he presses the box into his boyfriend’s chest. “You’ll like Ellen Ripley, I promise.”

 

Seamus’ eyes light up and he dives for the video recorder. Dean stands and makes his way into the kitchenette and makes himself a cup of tea, if only to loop his palms around something hot enough too scald him but cannot unless he allows it. The owner of this holiday flat puts the mugs (all pale yellow or pale blue- he picks a yellow one with a chip in it) on a mug tree, and this makes them harder to count. He tries anyway- one. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. This town does not have a clock and this flat does not have a grandfather clock.

 

“Dean? Dean, it’s starting!” Though most days other people sound like they’re on the other side ofa sea anyway, the voice coming from the living room is wet and crackling.

 

“Coming,” he replies, the effort to speak loud enough to be heard drains him enough he doesn’t have the energy to actually move until another five minutes have gone by. The kitchen is the only room that makes the newspaper advert honest- the sea is visible through this window and this window only, and keeps the company of whoever is on dishwasher duty. In the seven ‘o’ clock sun, Dean can see the bright blue of the sea reflecting in the shadows on the opposite wall. The door is open and spills out into the hall and the living room door is also open, but he cannot see Seamus- he is too far slumped down on the sofa, blonde hair sticking up as he lolls listlessly into the crease in the middle of the cushions and breathes loud enough for Dean to hear. Dean shifts his weight on to one foot, then the other. Hears the lino creak under his toes. Seamus hasn’t noticed his battered feet yet. Feels the cracks in the lino. Exhales. Picks up his tea and braves the other room. Down the hall, the bedroom door is shut and shadows are trapeziuming up and down the walls like a Mondrian painting. He feels all of a sudden caged and looks above the television to the sky painting the space above the other flats and houses and buildings. No the sea, but it will have to do. Still blue, right?

 

Seamus snaps out of his stupor when the extra weight causes the cushions to shift; blinking himself awake, he knuckles at his eyes with one hand and coughs into the other. His hair is sticking up worse than ever and the image makes Dean’s chest ‘ping’ like a wire snapping under high tension.

 

“Did you want a cup of tea, too?”

 

Seamus shakes his head and grimaces. Sits up some more and that in some way makes him seem already five times more put together. He looks still, for intents and purposes, like a fully functioning being. Dean can’t understand how that’s possible. How a person can have such control over their own bones. But here they are. “Nah,” Seamus replies, voice cracking. “Nah, ‘m alright, thanks. Not in the mood for tea right now, you know?” finishing his sentence and fully supported by the aid of the sofa cushions, he takes the crumpled cigarette from behind his ear and puts it between his lips with two fingers, reaching out to fish his lighter from the coffee table and get it burning. Dean snatches it from his moth and feels it crumble between his fingers the same way soil does when you throw it on a coffin.

 

Seamus squawks and for a brief second he looks lost:  hands still moving through the motions oflighting the damn thing even though it’s nolonger there, eyes blinking a few times in quick succession as he tries to decipher his boyfriend’s madness. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. The tobacco is crumbling little grains all over his skin now. Tough. He is Seamus’ boyfriend and he’s not smoking any longer. “Deeaaan!”

 

“No. you’ve had enough cigarettes.”

 

A rose blooms on is face as his moth twists into a pout. With the fever staining his pale cheeks, it’s too much red in one place and he looks wretched, and- if only he’d looked this way three months ago, then maybe this wouldn’t have become a problem.

 

Blue eyes light upon the cigarette packet on the table with nineteen cigarettes still in it. Dean gets halfway through counting them when a green flash interrupts his periphery vision and all he can see from then on is emerald.

 

“Well,” Seamus drawls, tongue and tone playful. As if the oppressive weight in the room is Dean’s and Dean’s alone. “ _I_ don’t think I’ve had enough.” And he reaches out for the packet and before he can get to it Dean seizes his shoulders and pins him back down.

 

“Are you taking the potion again?” he means to ask it gently, but it comes out brittle and blunt and angry.

 

Confusion is written all over his boyfriend’s face. “What- what potion- Dean, what are you on about?”

 

Little ripples are expanding and dissolving in his teacup. “The _potion_. The one you took in fifth year. Are you taking it again?” his voice cracks. He did not realise the source of the fear until now.

 

Seamus frowns and tries to squirm away from his grip, “What the fuck? No. Why would you even think that?” His voice lilts upward with but that’s no good. Dean wants _anger_ in it, so he can be sure Seamus is telling the truth.

 

“It’s alright if you are, but would you please just fucking tell me Shay? Please?”

 

“I’m not!” Briefly, his face twists into a snarl but falls again. The tea cup is rattling in its saucer. A high chime pierces right through Dean’s head and hurts all the way down to the bone.

 

“ _Don’t lie_ to me, Seamus.”

 

“I’m _not_!” The room explodes. Before he knows quite what is happening Dean is up on his feet and so is Seamus and there’s light and dark pressing all around him and the roar of a huge great monster ringing in his ears like the tide breaking multiplied by a thousand. Something smashes and Dean knows it is into a million pieces.

 

“Tell the truth!” he screams at where he thinks Seamus is- he can’t actually tell if he’s seeing him. More smashing. A noise that sounds like a scream. He thinks it’s coming from him. Wind whips at his clothes.

 

“I am!” he screams right back. “It’s not my fault you don’t believe me- what the fuck is wrong with you?”

 

One.Two. His feet drag him forward. Seamus shrinks, though he can’t tell if he’s actually backing away. “You’re the problem and I’m fucking sick of it!” A drawer clatters out, or a table falls over, he isn’t sure, but he blinks and Seamus is trying to rescue a box of potions spilling out onto the cream carpet. The monster roars. Magic pushes through Dean’s veins at the speed of a bullet train. He feels huge and tall and looming and his hands are no longer hands but gigantic paws. The monster is unfurling and breathing out fire and swipes its hand to paw at Seamus- that is not Dean is it?- No, that’s the magic, it’s all the magic- Dean’s got no control over any of this anymore- a scream is building deep in his heart- he lets himself scream-

 

Everything breaks into flashes.

 

Night’s fallen.

 

_!! HE PASSES IT TO GARDNER- AND HE SCORES !!_

“No more fucking potion you said! Never again you said! You promised!”

 

Seamus draws up, snarling and angry. “Well I needed a potion and now I’m starting to think you do too! One to get your fucking head sorted out!”

 

The door is slamming behind him. Dean’s out of the flat, on the street, walking away. He doesn’t know what he’s left behind. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> and it's finished! un-beta-ed, so let me know if there's anything I need to correct/tag/warn for

XXIV.

_Monday 13 th May 1991_

 

“What is it?” Mum barely glances over at him from where she’s scrubbing at Daisy’s dungarees in the sink, trying to get them clean with Fairy Liquid because they won’t be able to afford more washing powder until Friday after Dad gets paid and today’s only Monday and Daisy already has two stains on her clothes.

 

“Angie at school says Dad’s not my real Dad.”

 

Her hands drop the dungarees into the sink. Dean watches as they float to the bottom- the buttons clink against the plug and the noise is loud in the small room and Mum’s hands start to shake. Her mouth thins into a straight line and eventually after a long while of not saying anything the shivering travels up her arms and her shoulders curl over him. Her mouth completely disappears as she tries to swallow the tears from her eyes. It doesn’t work.

 

“Mum?” Dean grabs her arm and she flinches away from him. “Mum? Dad! Mum’s crying!” he tries to rush out the kitchen door just as Dad comes rushing in and is bowled over and ends up falling flat on his back. Frantically, Dad picks him up and dusts him off. He never looks away from Mum.

 

“Suze? What is it?” when he takes Mum by the shoulders she falls into him and sobs and he puts his arms round her and she didn’t do that with _him_ and Dad didn’t care if _he_ was okay and Dean watches, feeling an eerie calm float down to the bottom of his ribcage just like the dungarees.

 

“You’re not my dad,” he says. There’s no answer. “Are you my Dad?!”

 

His open mouth twists in pain. Mum sobs harder, or so Dean thinks, but then she pulls herself away slightly and without looking up replies, “No. He’s not. Not- not really.”

 

Dean had told Angie she was a liar. She’s not- not really.

 

Dad works his mouth and looks down at the tearful woman in his arms and then over at the silent child standing by the wall. “We thought you knew.” Mum nods, but it’s hard to tell because she won’t look up at him. Dean gives up after the fourth attempt to get her to look at him, it feels lonely.

 

“Are Daisy and Daphne still my sisters? Are you really my Mum?”

 

“Yes,” she replies, her voice cracking. “You’re- you’re _our_ son, Dean. I know- I know he’s not your _real_ dad, but… but he’s your proper dad, okay?”

 

Confusion yowls in him like a cat on bath day. “But how come real and proper are different? They mean the same thing.”

 

Her mouth does something funny and makes his chest feels like it’s been flipped upside down and round and round. “It just is. You’ll… when you’re older, you’ll understand, okay? But…”

 

“Why’d you never tell me?”

 

“We thought you knew,” Mum echoes what Dad said. Dean remembers his first ever memories- a house, not a flat, always empty and Mum always working. Deep down very dark inside of him, he has always wanted to ask why Dad didn’t come home from work earlier to look after him instead. Now he knows. So they wanted him to know _that_ , but he isn’t meant to know Dad doesn’t get paid until Friday or that Mum can’t ask for more shifts until Daphne starts school and Angie Buchanan wasn’t meant to listen to her mum’s girl’s night in and neither of them were meant to know. _What_ is he meant to know? There’s lots of things he doesn’t know he thinks maybe he should.

 

“Who’s my _real_ dad? Is he dead? Does he love me? Where is he? Why did he go? Did he turn the school hamster blue? Why did he leave? Why did I have to get a different Dad? Why-“

 

A big strong huge hand ruffles his hair and cuts him off. “Maybe you should ask another night, son,” Dad _finally_ looks at him only he goes straight back to looking at Mum again.

 

“No! You said I was meant to know! _Tell me!_ ” the last sentence is punctuate by stomping his foot on the floor. As soon as he does it he feels stupid and silly and little, and wants to go back to being small like Daisy and Daphne and not knowing what he’s meant to know. Some part of him wishes he never told Mum what Angie told him, only he’s kept quiet since Friday and it’s been hurting his insides all weekend. He _has_ to know- apparently he’s always meant to know. So now, Dean wants to know.

 

Mum breathes in. it sounds very loud and like the wind during a storm. “He was- your dad was… _At the time_ , Dean, he wasn’t a very nice person. Or- well, he was nice enough, but he wasn’t very good at the time.”

 

“Is he in prison?”

 

Mum gasps, “No! Not- not that sort of bad, I mean, he wasn’t nice. Perhaps he’s different now, or I just caught him in a bad mood I don’t know. But when I told him we were going to have a baby he- he ran away. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know. Maybe he was scared. But he ran away.”

 

“Why didn’t you run away too?”

 

Mum shakes her head. “It doesn’t work like that.”

 

So dads can not want their children, but mums can’t. Dean has a feeling this is another thing he is meant to already know. Mum is still talking. “So I, I looked after you. Me and your Grandma. And then I fell in love with your Dad-“they look at each other; they don’t smile but Dean feels lonelier than ever- “And now we’re here.”

 

“Is Dad going to leave, too?” the name makes his mouth taste funny.

 

A smile appears on his face, “Not unless I die.”

 

“ _Dan_!” Mum hisses, smacking his shoulder and giggling. It sounds a bit too whistling for her normal laugh, but she is happy. Dean can tell. “No,” Mum turns to him, calmer and still smiling. Her eyes look very shiny. “No, Dad’s not going to leave. None of us are, okay?”

 

Dean shrugs, “Okay.” He goes and watches _Scooby Doo_ before it ends. He doesn’t know at this time he is meant to hug his Mum and Dad.

 

Two months later, an owl and a witch professor come to the flat and he leaves and tells everyone at school his dad is his _Dad_ until one night in second year he and Seamus exchange fatherly truths no louder than whispers. Dean never speaks to Angie again after he tells her at school the next day in the playground she is a liar and then in the cloakroom later when they’re both pretending to go to the toilet that she was right she was right, but it’s a secret and people will think she’s stupid if she asks anymore questions because this is something they’re just meant to know.

 

***

XXV.

_Sunday 23 rd August 1998_

 

It’s been three months since Neville became brave, and he moved into the little cottage at the bottom of his grandmother’s garden and Dean hasn’t seen him once since then. Part of him wants Neville to stay that way forever: roaring and wrecking righteous destruction and his grandmother proud of him. Only his face twisted when he screamed and it wasn’t pretty the way faces should be when they are triumphant, but then again triumph isn’t really what any of them had thought it was and now Dean is here and anger is coursing through his veins in place of blood- he seizes it to stay alive else his heart will stop. It’s the anger which is propelling him forward over the grass under the drooping stars; it’s dark now, and there’s no other light source for miles. It’s a big garden. It’s a monster. It’s a forest fire and Dean snarls as he rounds the corner to the front of the cottage, glad he can’t see his own face twisting, glad- glad- glad- glad and with every intention of carrying on to the front door until he makes out a boy-shaped hunch crouching next to a flowerbed and blending in with the gloom that startles when it hears his footsteps. He stops dead.

 

“Neville?”

 

“Wha- who- Dean! Oh! What are you doing here? Is Seamus here too?”

 

He hurries over to him and soft lights flicker on one by one with each step, red, blue, green- yellow blinks on at the same time he steps close enough and it burns Dean’s eyes as he says: “Fuck Seamus.”

 

Neville’s face comes into view a demon coming out of the fog. Or the moon. Grey, tired and modest and the mention of the body left behind him a lighter to a cigarette. Dean snarls it again, breathless as the tide goes out to create the tsunami and chest heaving as it drains him in the process. “Fuck him!”

 

“Oh, _Merlin_ , Dean- what’s happened?!”

 

“He’s a bastard!” the tsunami crashes.

 

Neville grabs his arm to take him inside the house, more lights expanding and blooming to illuminate the path and his hand is heavy and it feels like the lead being clipped to a dog’s collar and when he flinches away he’s still so thin it only digs him deeper into the hold. “What’s happened? Is Seamus-“

 

“I wish he was dead!”

 

“What?” his face changes in a way he can’t understand or doesn’t like or doesn’t want to understand or knows or knows too well and- and- and it feels like he is underwater. Everything is fading in and out. Neville lets him go and Dean storms inside and paces up and down the hall restlessly. When he was six he got to go on a school trip to the zoo. A newly-introduced lion was there that day, struggling to adapt to its new cage. Plodding in circles and nosing the fence, getting an electric shock to its nose every time and never learning.

 

“Sorry I came so late,” Dean mutters when his orbit brings him close to Neville’s shoulder blades.

 

Neville flinches. “It’s alright.” Dean’s hearts wrenches.

 

“It’s not alright! Seamus-“

 

“ _What_ did Seamus do?”

 

It’s best to start from the beginning. “Do you remember fifth year?” Dean doesn’t although he remembers what happened well enough. Too well. “And Seamus was sick? Only he wasn’t.”

 

“I know.”

 

“You do? Wha- did he tell you over- last year?”

 

“No,” Neville shakes his head grimly. “He never said anything, but… I knew, you know? Worked out he wasn’t just ‘sick’.”

 

“Oh he’s sick alright,” Dean growls. “Sick in the bloody head!”

 

“That’s not fair, Dean.”

 

Dean stops dead, though it isn’t the words but how his ankle is throbbing. The pain brings the taste of dirt to his mouth and tears to his eyes and then he is crying and it all comes out Seamus and worry and the nightmares and the war and the Snatchers and the soil and Ted and Dirk and Luna and Ginny and liking Ginny and dating Seamus and missing him and Mum and Dad and Daisy and Daphne and Delilah and the fear and the worry and Seamus Seamus Seamus and the green potion and more of it too much of it and Seamus _Seamus_.

 

Neville picks up his tearful corpse off the floor and helps him into the sitting room, settles him on the sofa, then leaves and comes back with a teapot and a floating tray. When he waves his wand around, one of the teacups scuttles into Dean’s hand and he flinches and the boiling tea pours on his palms instead. Good- he’s running out of tears.

 

“Fuck- Merlin- Shit- Dean I’m sorry!” the apology is immediate, profuse and entirely truthful.

 

Dean shakes his head slowly, “It’s okay.”

 

Neville doesn’t think it’s okay and bats the teapot aside to take his hands from his lap and looks them over and Dean gasps; Seamus is his boyfriend but his hands are thin and small and bird-boned where Neville’s are big and broad and bruised and bitter with dirt and- he shouldn’t be thinking like this; it’s a dark slope that’ll drag him down, but- why didn’t they fuck anyone else during seventh year- who said they didn’t- maybe this whole thing would be easier if they had. Maybe they wouldn’t have come back to each other so broken if they had buried some shards in other people, if they would have come back to each other at all. Maybe this is their problem- they haven’t got any other choice.

 

“You don’t seem okay,” Neville replies softly, sitting next to him on the settee without dropping his hands.

 

 _I am_. “I’m not.” Dean whispers back. It feels dirty and traitorous to say, but he isn’t.

 

“Is it the war?”

 

He nearly laughs. _Which one_? “Yes. No. It’s… I have nightmares.”

 

“About the war?”

 

“Not always. Sometimes- sometimes about Seamus.”

 

Neville’s eyes are pure transparent pools. Dean breathes a little easier. He was expecting something else. “Or about magic. And- Seamus tried- he tried- he tried to stop being gay. In fifth year. Did you know that?”

 

The face doesn’t change. _Of course not_ , Dean thinks, _the moon doesn’t change._ “I guessed.” A cloud blows over the surface. “That must have hurt you.”

 

“It wasn’t about me!” Dean veers up, and then crumbles as realisation hits. “Only- it was. It was all about me. I don’t even know if he’s ever fancied another boy. Just me.” Dean knows people who would do terrible things for that sort of love. To be on the receiving end of that love. “Yeah,” he whispers, quieter than before. “It hurts.” It’s an honour with a sharp edge and poison on the tip of the sword. It’s killing him. _Do I want to die_?

 

“That’s okay.”

 

“No. I want it to stop hurting.” More tears sluice down his face- he didn’t think he had anything left to lose, but he does. Bones and blood and body. “Sometimes-“ his voice creaks like a ship breaking up in open water- “Sometimes I don’t think the world will be happy until I’ve lost everything.”

 

An arm is thrown round his shoulders, “I won’t let that happen. Seamus won’t let that happen- _none of us_ would let that happen, Dean, I promise. We love you.”

 

“So does Seamus. It doesn’t help.”

 

“Then what will?”

 

Slowly, Dean shakes his head, “I don’t think anything will.”

 

Neville shakes his own head. It feels like a parody, or a ghost in a haunted house “I’m sure that’s not true.”

 

“Isn’t it?” before he knows it, Dean is standing and his heart is beating again. “Because I’m all fucked up and broken whilst everyone else gets to carry on! I’m not sleeping- not eating- not drawing- not enjoying anything and _you_ are! You’re sleeping and eating and gardening and _happy_ , how the fuck is that fair? How the _fuck_ is that going to be fixed? Will you wave your magic wand and make everything better?”

 

“No.”

 

“No!” Dean yells. “Because you can’t! I can’t! I can’t be happy and I can’t fucking cope!”

 

Neville looks over at him, his face taking on an unreadable expression in the dark of the night. “No one copes, Dean.”

 

“Then why,” he falls to his knees for the second time in as many weeks and pleads. Pleads for his life his sanity his happiness. “Why do I feel like this, please, Neville, tell me why help me Neville please.”

 

“I can’t.” Warmth encloses round his shoulders and up his back. A hug. A help. A hurt. None of the three. “I can’t Dean, I can’t. I don’t know how.” A single sob. Like a wolf howling alone.

 

“Then how are _you_ coping? Happy? Living, Neville, how?”

 

He began, in the tone of a man used to being found inadequate, but with no choice when beseeched by a boy’s broken body. “I- I garden. When I can’t sleep, I make tea. I hike to Luna’s house. Or go and sit with Grandma. Go to the muggle parks and stroke some of the dogs. I brush my teeth even when I don’t want to get out of bed. I get out of bed when I don’t want to. Grandma makes sure I eat even if I don’t want to. My knee hurts sometimes, so I make sure I always have pain potion in the cupboard just in case.”

 

Dean feels himself crumbling. “I can’t do any of those things.”

 

“Why can’t Seamus help you?”

 

“I can’t let him.”

 

“Oh. _Oh, Dean_.”

 

He didn't want pity. Needed it only if it would let him be whole again. “Don’t, Neville, just... don’t.”

 

“Okay.”

 

 _It’s not okay_ the force to say it is so strong he has to bite down on his tongue until he tastes blood. During the silence they lap into, Dean closes his eyes. The exhausted way in which they hurt has become so constant for the past year that being reminded of it now is a novelty. On occasion, he will close his eyes shut long enough that they stop hurting, so it hurts again when he opens them. Like renewing wedding vows. That routine has become his idea of sleep.

 

Maybe- maybe Dean put the noose round his neck and tied it to the branch of the willow tree. His choice, maybe, or maybe he was driven to it, but it amounts to the same thing. And whilst he could reach up and unhook the rope from the tree, the wolves would come closer. Fighting your predators risks tightening the noose round your neck. There’s no other way for boys like him. He’s fucked every way and his only mercy is he chooses his own destruction. He doesn’t know which war he is referring to, but he’s starting to realise they all end the same.

 

“Neville?”

 

“What is it?”

 

“Am I a bad person?”

 

“Not to me. Not to anyone I know, why?”

 

“I don’t think I love Seamus anymore. I don’t think I love anyone anymore. Or feel anymore. It’s just dark, all the time.” His ribcage is in eternal night time. Looking over at Neville, it doesn’t seem so bad; after all, the moon shines at night.

 

“Maybe you felt too much over seventh year. I’m sure you’ll feel again once you’re better?”

 

“If this is how shit it feels not to feel, I don’t think I want to be better.”

 

“Maybe you’re right.”

 

Another long silence. The clock ticks. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty one. Twenty two. Twenty three. Twenty four. Twenty five. Twenty six. Twenty seven. Twenty eight. Twenty nine. Thirty. Thirty one. Thirty two. Thirty three. Thirty four. Thirty five. Thirty six. Thirty seven. Thirty eight. Thirty nine. Forty. Forty one. Forty two. Forty three. Forty four. Forty five. Forty six. Forty seven. Forty eight. Forty nine. Fifty. Fifty one. Fifty two. Fifty three. Fifty four. Fifty five. Fifty six. Fifty seven. Fifty eight. Fifty nine. Sixty. He still doesn’t feel better. The tea cups have run off and are cowering under the armchair. All that pokes out is one time slim handle that casts a half-moon shadow on the carpet. It is getting very, very late and Dean is very, very tired.

 

“Neville?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“I do still love Seamus, don’t I?”

 

“You do. I can see it.” With a rueful smile he adds, “At Hogwarts, I was always so jealous of you and him. I wanted someone to love me and look at me like the two of you did. I haven’t seen either of you in a while, but I bet fifty galleons you still do.”

 

Dean frowns. “’Someone’? You’re...?”

 

“Just like you,” he shrugs. “Seamus is the only one who had a crisis over _that_.”

 

“Ah.” His knees creak as he levers himself up onto the sofa again. “I blame the parents.”

 

It’s not funny, but Neville laughs anyway. He’s good like that and Dean loves him a little bit. “I think you’re right. But... what happened tonight? Why did you come here?”

 

“I- there was- we got into a fight. We- he- he’s- he’s taking the potion again. Or... I thought he was. I asked him because he was coughing and trying to light a cigarette- he’s a fucking idiot, for smoking, I mean, though for taking the potion, too. Then we shouted and- and- and-“ his voice chokes under the weight of fear. Neville puts a warm, solid hand on his knee. With one salvaged gasp of breath he finishes: “He had potions. Hidden in the drawer. I smashed them.”

 

“Were they definitely the same potions as last time?”

 

“I don’t know. Everything was- it was so _angry_. We were screaming at each other and I don’t know what happened or how I got here. But I think so.”

 

“Why would he take them again? When he was happy to be your boyfriend in public all through sixth year?”

 

“I don’t know.” It’d be easier if it was that simple. If Neville wasn’t friends with some of the Slytherins. If all the Slytherins were death eaters. If Narcissa Malfoy didn’t love her son and Dumbledore was definitely good. So much fucking easier, yet it can’t be.

 

“Well, I think we should find out.” Neville stands and with a flick of his wand his coat is in his hands, because it’s cold now the sun has gone down. Dean is the night time. He shouldn’t be putting his friend through this shit.

 

He hasn’t got the energy to argue.

 

“Okay- but- wait- we can’t, we can’t apparate. We’re not at home, we’re on holiday.” The candy has gone sour in his mouth and the sea is trying to drown him. His sisters should bury him in the sand up to his neck and leave him there forever. If his body disappears before eternity is over it will be the sweetest forgiveness he has ever know.

 

He stops half in and half out of his coat, sleeve dangling like a man come back from world war one. “You’ll just have to apparate us then, won’t you? Where are you staying? Is it a seaside town or somewhere else? Is it even in England- oh! Have you gone abroad? Did you see that thing in the paper where...”

 

On and on he goes, a fast and burbling river Dean can’t surface from to voice a protest; he holds Neville’s hand tight before they are even clear of his protective charms and whilst the other boy is sending a patronus through the garden to tell his grandmother he is going out for the night. “Maybe she’ll think I’ve gone for a wild night out on the town,” Neville smirks. It takes a lot of bravery to smirk. He’s grown so big and braze it dazzles Dean to look at him and yet he is still Neville. The patronus cuts across the ground like a slim white scar across the bridge of a boy’s nose. Dean looks away, to the safety of Neville’s tartan shoulder and elbow patches. He, too, has embraced muggle fashion in the year of 1998, and he fits into his clothes and his skin.

 

 “What do you think about to cast a patronus?”

 

Neville glances over at him, the shiver as they pass through the protection charms making it seem like he’s smiling. “When the boggart turned into Snape with Grandma’s hat on. What do you think about, Dean?”

 

“Seamus.” The answer is on his tongue without thinking. It is always Seamus.

 

***

 

“ _Merlin_ ,” Neville whistles when he opens the front door to the holiday flat. It’s a mess, made even more of a mess by the parts that have escaped the mess and it’s not a pretty sight and the rooms beyond are graves of silence.

 

“Will you stop saying that?” Dean snaps. He toes his shoes off and looks up just in time to see Neville drawing his wand and ‘scourgify’-ing a stain on the carpet. “No!” he lunges forward and catches his wrist and the interim period where Neville gets a chance to respond is only because this is the closest Dean’s been to a wand in three months and he is trying really, really hard not to puke his intestines onto the newly-cleaned floor.

 

“Dean,” eyes heavy with pity flick over him. “We have to.”

 

Yes, Dean knows they have to- the owner will go mad otherwise- their budget doesn’t cover manic, magical destruction but Dean still doesn’t want to watch- or waste their money because he couldn’t spend the remaining twelve days here- in a grave dug by magic. “No,” he begs, willing for his friend to give him just _this one thing_.

 

Arms pulls him into an embrace and at the same time it closes, Neville says, “Yes.”

 

“Okay.” Dean sobs, face dry, eyes down, head buried in the soil until it’s all over.

 

***

 

“Wait here for a while, okay?” Neville leaves him propped up against the wall, watching his boyfriend who can’t see him in return and his head banging in time with his heart beat. It’s been a very long night and the hop e of morning is still to come. There’s nothing Dean wants more. There’s nothing Dean wants less, now three months after a terrible thing and he needs Neville Longbottom to help them remember how to hold hands and- some would say the Snatchers should have shovelled the soil on top of him a bit quicker.

 

Thankfully, Dean’s trembling exhale is lost underneath Neville’s heavy footsteps to the sofa where Seamus is asleep. Upright and neck at an angle. For a second, Dean thinks his neck is broken. There’s a rope- Neville moves out of the way of the streetlight outside the window and it’s just the window frame and there’s no noose. Just Seamus. Neville shakes him awake tenderly and gently, kneels down in front of him where he is sitting on the sofa _up, Neville, up, don’t lower yourself_ what is he _thinking_? Nothing he’s not thinking- he tired- just tired. Dean blinks himself closer to consciousness and strains his ears to listen as the skeleton cracks its neck and unfolds.  The living room light turns on somehow. (Dean knows how, he just pretends not to.)

 

Seamus is huddled against the sofa, face gnarled like Medusa, with snot and tears and salt streaked across his skin and crusting under his eyes. Breathes rattle around his lungs and he winces on every exhale- just when Dean is about to abandon his refuge to wade over because there’s no way he can let his boyfriend carry on in pain like this and what if Neville doesn’t notice these things about Seamus the way he does and and and Neville shifts to one side and pulls a bottle out of his pocket and presses it into Seamus’ fingers. “Neville?”

“Yea, it’s me. Now I _know_ you’re chest hurts, so drink that.”

 

Seamus obeys. To drink the unknown because you trust the giver is not a blessing Dean has known. It’s only occurring to him now how much of his life he actually witnesses: making tea and running baths and making dinner and holding hands and breathing. Everything has to be seized in his own fingers else he will fear it, and he doesn’t know which war this has come from and he doesn’t know if there is any other way to survive. Perhaps they’re all like this, and they’re all doomed together and, well, ‘together’ doesn’t sound so bad.

 

When he had been walking to Neville’s house, tens and hundreds of cars had driven past him despite the lateness of the hour. In more than one moment he had been tempted to not look both was when he crossed the road because four hours ago and yesterday was the worst day of his life. Today his friend is here and it is summer and they’re on holiday and he’ll sort yesterday out now and everything will be fine. His ribcage feels light and breezy and painless for the first time in a year; everyone has a year of their lives that is just pure, utter shit, don’t they? He’s had a midlife crisis and now the worst should be over. Dean tunes back into the conversation with a smile on his face.

 

“Thanks,” Seamus mutters. “Ran out of me other potion.”

 

“I’ve left some more in the kitchen for you,” Neville replies, not unkindly. “They’ll help with the coughing, too. Though that’s for Dean’s benefit as well as yours.”

 

“Dean’s at your house? Did he- when did he- is he okay? Is he- is he angry at me?” he twitches frantically, rabbit-like, torn between sinking lower into the cushions and haring off to check on his boyfriend.

 

“Not _angry_ , he’s worried about you. And he also wants to know what was in the potions he smashed.”

 

His eyes fall away to study the coffee table. “Thanks- for cleaning everything up, I mean, and... it was just pepper-up potion. Or something like it. I- I got ‘em at work, when the cough syrup weren’t working.”

 

“Dean thinks you’re taking the potion from fifth year again, Seamus.”

 

“I’d never! Honestly, Neville, I never even _thought_ about taking _that_ again, I’m happy now- or with being gay, anyway. People... people didn't take it as bad as I thought, and even if... I _wouldn’t_ , Neville, believe me I wouldn’t.”

 

“I believe you.” _Me too_.

 

“And- and- I only hid it because- because it’s magic and Dean doesn’t like magic anymore, you know? Didn't want to upset him, so I... God I didn't even think about it like that. No wonder he hates me, I’ve been so stupid.”

 

 _No_. “You haven’t.” The cushions squeak as he sits next to him and puts an arm round Seamus’ shoulders. “Or at least no more than Dean has, either.”

 

“But...”

 

Ducking his head, Neville makes Seamus look him in the eyes. “You _haven’t_ , Seamus, you haven’t. Carrying on isn’t _easy_ \- you know it isn’t, and... In some ways, you and Dean are coping better than most of us are.”

 

“You get a lot of fucked up bastards turning up at your house at two in the morning, do you?”

 

“Every now and again.”

 

He laughs, but it peters off into a noise half sigh and half cough.

 

“It’s just...” Seamus looks away. “Dean... doesn’t want any magic in the house, and- I didn’t, either. Still don’t. And when we first moved we told each other everything and then we never spoke about it again and- I like our lives now. But there are times we absolutely _need_ magic and I just feel so dirty because I want to do what he does and ignore the whole world completely, but I can’t. I just- I can’t.”

 

Neville’s arm tightens. “Do you mind hearing what I think?”

 

A sniff, “What?”

 

“Well you’re both idiots, firstly. Secondly, you need- you need to _talk_ to each other. It’s- you’ve both been trying to pretend you’re fine, because you don’t want the other to worry. And then you think the other one is fine and feel guilty for not being fine. It just makes the times one of you can’t pretend even worse, because you feel even more guilty when you think there should have been a sign you should have noticed telling you they weren’t fine and you could have stopped it from happening.”

 

“That.... yeah, that’s pretty much it.”

 

“So you need to talk to Dean.”

 

“How can I when I fucked up so bad he’s not even here?”

 

“Yes he is.” Neville’s eyes fall ion _him_ and slowly he drags his feet forward into the living room.

 

“Oh.” Seamus says, turning his head. Dean can see his eyes are wet. “Neville’s right,” Seamus tells him. “We’re both fucking idiots.”

 

“I know.” Dean replies, voice cracking in his mouth. “Neville’s always right.”

 

 

Seamus nods, looks away and then back again and then away. At last, his face crumples, “Dean, I’m so sorry-“

 

Rain is falling on his cheeks. “I know. Me too.”

 

***

 

“I didn't know,” Dean begins, the first words since Neville settled them both on the sofa and left them alone with cups of tea. “I didn't know you felt that way about- about magic. I...” _I always wanted to be you. You’ve been so good and so brilliant this whole time_.

 

“Oh. Well, for what it’s worth... I didn't know you thought I was taking the potion again.” He blinks a pause away. “Why _did_ you think that?”

 

“I don’t really know.” The confession is a truth but it feels like a lie. “But I think maybe because- when, when you were taking them in fifth year-“ Seamus looks over at him, face sad and soft and sorry and it was three years ago, _fuck_ when did they get so old?- “I was worried. About you. Really, really worried.”

 

A confession that is left to linger in the heart eventually tastes butter in the mouth when it is ousted at last from the shelter it has made.

 

“I’m sorry.” Seamus leans over and grasps his hand briefly before it falls away again and he sits back upright to confess in turn. “You, uh- since we moved in together you’ve been- I’ve worried about you, too. But- but you always seemed so together that I just... and part- part of me was jealous.” His words die to a whisper and Dean seizes the last exhale and laughs with it: merry and bright and howling.

 

“ _Me_? God- Shay- I’m a mess! I don’t even sleep, half the time, and I only want you around when you’re nowhere near. I can’t draw for shit and sometimes- sometimes I wish I’d died. Or we broke up, so you wouldn’t have to deal with me. I go to sleep and Ted is still alive, Shay- do you really still want me? After tonight?”

 

Both of them look around the wonderful job their friend has done to clean up their holiday fat because it is far, far easier than looking at each other’s eyes.

 

“I always want you,” his boyfriend murmurs, once the hurt has died down enough in their hearts it doesn’t reach their lungs any more. “Always, Dean, absolutely forever and always. When have I ever done anything I don’t want?” Dean breathes out, suddenly able to. “Do you want me?”

 

“Of course I always do, Seamus. Even when I don’t want you I want you. I'll want you a million times before I die. More.”

 

“I love you too” Seamus replies, face falling into something soft and honest. It hurts, but Dean has to go ahead. Even though it hurts. Because it hurts. Because it won’t ever stop hurting, but it is easier when you have someone whose promises are made even after seeing you at rock bottom. He doesn’t know the right way to begin, so he simply lets it become a waterfall pouring from his mouth and hopes there will be an end.

 

“Stop smoking, please I fucking hate you smoking. All I can think of when you smoke is how it makes you cough, and then I remember what you did to yourself. I don’t want to remember fifth year like that. I want it to be ‘fifth year when we started dating’. Why do you want to ruin all of the good memories I have left?”

 

A one-shouldered shrug and a lost expression. “I didn't mean it like that, Dean, honest to god. I just- I just took it up during seventh year because Parvati gave me a packet of cigarettes as a birthday present- and it was a way to piss off the Carrows, they couldn’t stand any sort of muggle stuff- and , and, it got me away on me own for a bit. When I needed to be by meself and I kept it up, after, _because_ it made me cough and I’d remember fifth year and remember there’d been a time before the war.”

 

 He coughs on cue and Dean feels his own chest hurt. “I miss you,” he says when the coughing stops- it’s not as bad as it was five hours ago and for that Dean will cope with the potions in the kitchen.

 

“I miss you too,” Seamus says.

 

Dean looks at him then. He’s scarred from the Carrows. Dean’s own shoulders are littered with whitened-out slashes he can’t make into a constellation no matter how much they resemble streaking stars on a night sky. Carefully, he reaches over and twists their hands together so the blue line across their knuckles matches up: the remnants of their first spell together in second year. The only time they were allowed to do a spell together. The only scar either of them has that isn’t from a war. The one thing either of them has that come out of the war untouched. Seamus’ fingers tighten, and then he leans forward and kisses Dean gently. Dean kisses back. Eventually, they fall asleep on the sofa.

 

***

 

He knows he is dreaming, but that doesn’t make a blind bit of difference. Just like the girl doesn’t get the chance as the adults drown her in the bath for the ritual. The girl is called Doe. If she stopped to think about it, she would feel their eyes plunging daggers into her back and stripping the fog away from her piece meal until parts of her skin would come off with it. So she didn’t think about not one thing not one bit. She thought about the ritual and the adults and how she’s the virgin doomed to fall in love with the demon and bring death and destruction and all the other things the world has already survived a hundred times over. Maybe she will scold herself later on, when she gets out, but when she comes to the start of the fog she is still running on the momentum of all her stupid decisions and goes right on until she gets to the Gate. The first time she came here, she hadn’t been able to see anything except for Cousin Nina. But since, she had dived in herself and seen that the big, scary Gate separating the Underworld off from its inhabitants was just the top of a big hill and she had seen better on school trips, and she even had the courage to roll down it once.

 

It was the underworld and things like rules didn't apply to her, so she threw herself onto the ground or what passed for dead grass and rolled down the bloody hill all the way to the bottom. The world turned into a lovely swirl of light grey when she was rolling, and when she came to a stop at the feet of the Queen she had a happy grin on her face. And then she realised who it was, and carried on smiling because the Queen was a nice-looking young woman, and that sort of thing always put her in a good mood.

 

“Morning,” she said cheerfully.

 

All the demons around her had their big claws at the ready, but Doe had been in Primark on Black Friday and wasn’t fazed one bit. She was certain the Queen was trying not to laugh.

 

“You dare invade the Underworld, Woman?”

 

“I’m here to offer you a deal, _Your Majesty_.” Her day had started with being drowned in magic bath and the ending couldn’t get any worse- she was on a roll. The Queen was... amused?

 

Maybe?

 

Not killing her, at least.

 

She’d take it.

 

“You’re very brazen, to come here thinking you could have such proposition I would lower myself to your level!”

 

 _Ah, but you’re blushing!_ She thought. _And you’ve given me an idea!_ “You took the words right out my mouth, yer majesty. I’ve got you a _proposition_.”” You lot ever head of the virgin?” _Maybe not you, your majesty, but then you’re a damn fine looking woman_.

 

Queenie hissed. Several monsters spat and swore. A blow hit her right in the face and something cold pressed into her back.

 

Oops.

 

“I don’t fancy a lifetime commitment with any of these fuckers,” she said. “But I do fancy _you_.”

 

The Queen blinked then again. “My hearing must be going,” she said finally. “The Virgin sworn to damn the Underworld as revenge for making one of its monsters making her fall in love, and you walk straight in like a lamb for slaughter?”

 

“... I never said it was a well-thought out plan.”

 

“It’s a trap!” something roared from the crowd.

 

 _Oh, bollocks_ she thought as her mind finally came to its senses. _Where have you been for the past eighteen years, brain?_ “Look,” she said, more out of a strange primal urge not to let the monsters realise their Queen was speechless. “We’re both going to end up in this shit hole either way. Those fucking bastards up there (she pointed vaguely upwards) are... well, fucking bastards. And if I’m going to be the disappointment, I want to be the biggest fucking disappointment to ever exist, and I want to have a bloody good time while I’m at it.”

 

“You said this was a _deal_. What do I get in return for helping your teenager rebellion against Mummy and Daddy?”

 

Shit.

 

“I’ll come down here and serve you,” she decided. “You’ll be stuck with me forever.”

 

“An eternity with the one destined to damn me?”

 

_Let me in your bed and I’ll do a lot more than that..._

 

“Don’t you want to see the sun again? The rain? Someone you love? Something you love? A pretty flower? A nice dog?”

 

“What century are you in now?”

 

“2002.”

 

 _That_ made them all hiss and swear and spit again, but it was hard to differentiate any particular moods.

 

“A new Millennium,” the Queen said. She spoke the word ‘millennium’ in a very attractive way, with a capital ‘m’.

 

“It’s a whole new world up there, “ Doe said gently. “I’ll show it you if you want it.”

 

Something about the Queen’s face changed- thought it was hard to see in the crappy lighting down here, but she thought maybe it was-

 

“It’s a trap!” one of the monsters roared again. Only it wasn’t a monster it was a huge big shadow like the sort a man would make on an alley wall in the dark and it had a bloody great big knife in its hand.

 

The Queen turned and stood up fully and glared just like a queen. “You challenge me, Theris? I challenge you! Fight me now for my power, or stick a knife through that empty skull of yours!”

 

Theris didn't stab himself in the head (as Doe thought would have been the most sensible thing to do) but strode forward just as everyone else scurried backwards. She had read about things like this. A demon could challenge any decision they thought wrong jut by waving a knife about, and then there was a duel to the death and whoever won... _won_. This was probably, she thought as she watched the fight play out, a much better form of democracy than she had ever seen in the ‘proper’ world. . . so long as the Queen won.

 

Although she looked like she was winning. Theris had blood all over one side of his face and in his hair and the Queen has produced a knife of her own from somewhere and scratches all over her face and shoulders. The crowd circling them was all screams, and she hoped that Theris hadn’t inspired enough loyalty for anyone to sneak up on the poor woman. For all it’d make the decision to run back to reality that much easier, it’d still leave behind the need to fall in love with one of the bastards. (Was _that_ why she was going to end up destroying the demons? As revenge for killing the Queen?)

 

There was a bit more scuffling. Some shoving. Both shouted at each other and though every word was seemingly in a different language, Doe knew they all meant ‘cunt’.

 

Theris lunged at the Queen with his knife. The Queen stepped sideways, turned around, and stabbed her own knife into the back of his neck.

 

He died.

 

The crowd yanked his last breath out of him and turned it into a roar. The Queen swung round to face them all pointed at something over Doe’s left shoulder. “Force her proof!”

 

She turned round, and another demon was coming towards her. “For fuck’s sake!” she grunted, and before he had to wait any longer and lose her bottle, she strode towards him as he strode forwards her and kneed him between his legs as hard as she could. He screamed and she let the relief sweep her over on top of him, punching e=him everywhere she could and screaming as loud as she could go. Everything turned to burninghitpunchsmACKPINCHJABPULLSCREAMANDSCREAMAND

 

“Enough.” The Queen ordered. And she looked up and there was she was- standing over here and the dead demon. “I have seen your proof.” The Queen said, a look about her grey eyes that spoke of savagery and love.

 

“And I’ve seen yours,” Doe wheezed. It was a good thing she hadn’t had to run away- she couldn’t run for a fucking bus. The Queen looked beautifully dishevelled. Messed up hair, bloody skin, sweat all over here and mud all up her legs. She was the most beautiful sight Doe had ever laid eyes on. Or, at least, that was the excuse she’d give anyone who asked later. She did the most dignified twirl she could do next to a dead body and looking even worse than she used to after an hour of PE.

 

“My Lady,” she gasped without looking away from those grey, grey eyes. “I have nothing to swear to you but myself. And I have nothing of myself but my heart. But I swear that to you. I swear my heart to you. From this day until the day you drag it out of me, my heart is yours. I swear it to you with utter certainty that you earned it, and you deserve it.”

 

She took the Queen’s hand, dragged it bloody fingers across her face all the way down her neck, and then straight across her chest to hold over her heart. “It is yours, my lady. If you’ll have it.”

 

The Queen’s hand turned and held hers. “I do.”

 

Doe sagged with relief and smile dup at her, and she smiled back. _That girl brings her own sun to the Underworld_ , Doe thought, and everyone else she had forgotten was there took that moment to realize it, too. One by one they all dropped to their knees and bowed their heads in one long exhaling sigh until the only two showing above the dark sea was Doe kneeling to their Queen.

 

The Queen finally looked away. She looked around at everyone worshipping her, and her face looked surprised and delighted and just the tiniest bit amazed and scared and she broke Does’ heart. “I’m yours, my lady,” she whispered. And she sank forward and pressed her head against the Queen’s legs in the tenderest gesture she knew.

 

***

 

XXVI.

_Monday 24 th August 1998_

 

“Mm-ow!” Dean is rudely drawn to consciousness by Seamus protesting as his back protests. Sleeping on the sofa doesn’t seem like such a good idea as you unfurl from the puddle of warmth in the cold light of morning. It takes blinking for Dean to realise he hasn’t breathed yet and his shirt is soaked through. “This sofa is even worse than the one at home,” Seamus grumbles, sliding back down. His words hit Dean’s ear hot and warm.

 

“Don’t sleep on it then,” Dean shrugs, it turns into a frown when pale. Bony fingers reach towards the coffee table and the cigarette packet on top of it. he tried not to count the cigarettes like soldiers there, but he’s halfway through before the thought is even fully formed and twenty one twenty two before he can slap the reaching hand away. “Don’t smoke, either. You already sound like your lungs will come up.”

 

“It stinks too,” he adds helpfully, looking mournful over the loss but not fighting it too much.

 

“Why do it then? What the fuck is attractive about smelly sticks that make you cough and give you cancer?”

 

Seamus tilts him a sly smirk, “You don’t exactly shit roses either.”

 

Dean’s kick veers him off the edge of the cushions and saving himself from the floor means a hand lunging out to steady itself on the coffee table. There’s a brief pause where Seamus is straddling the gap between sofa and table where he just has time to meet Dean’s eyes in triumph before he falls on his arse with an ‘oof’. Dean cackles and in revenge Seamus snatches a cigarette from the packet and presses it with two fingers against his lips. _Don’t do this_ , Dean takes the cigarette in his mouth and lets his boyfriend light it. His mouth twists the same way it does when they kiss. It _tastes_ horrendous and also like Seamus and also the same way it did when they tried cigarettes in fourth year for the first time and Dean supposes that will have to be enough. The hot air on his face might be Seamus breath or the cigarette tip, or the wind blowing through the window. Dean inhales carefully. _We shouldn’t be doing this_.

 

When the smoke billows out of his lungs, he feels like a dragon. Without meaning to, he smiles. Slowly, Seamus smiles back at him and Dean watches from another body as the blonde boy takes the white knife from his own lips and kisses him instead. There’s a car alarm blaring outside. It’s too hot to touch one another, really, and Dean can feel his thighs sticking together and moisture on the back of his neck and rolling, desert white heat in his trousers. Neither of them really even particularly like sex how people are supposed to like it, and there’s so many times one of them has begged off to watch something on TV that he can’t count them all on his fingers. They shouldn’t, he knows, kiss anything but chastely else Seams will cough, but Seamus does anyway and they both taste of nicotine and tea and Neville’s potion and not brushing their teeth since yesterday morning and they both probably need a shower before they go out today. Bones poke him every which way- both bodies here are still too skinny, too tired, both boys still too broken, too empty. They have the least amount of sex of any teenagers he knows.

 

They shouldn’t they shouldn’t they shouldn’t they should- this won’t make anything any better- it won’t make anything any worse- teenagers shouldn’t have sex teenagers should have sex- he's feeling something and that should carry on- he’s feeling again and it’s a good thing, maybe. He can’t remember is Neville said anything about _this_.

 

Neville is the last person he wants to be thinking about right now.

 

Seamus breaks away from his mouth, hungry for ait and love and sex and something hot and fast and warm and slow. “We shouldn’t do this on the sofa. It’s not ours.”

 

Dean seizes his shoulders and rolls them both onto the floor and narrowly avoids cracking his head open on the corner of the coffee table and avoids talking about it by kissing him again. “I love you.”

 

“I love you too.” Seamus wheezes against his chin. “But maybe not on the carpet? I plan on making quite a mess of you.”

 

Rolling his eyes and grinning, Dean drags them down the hall to the bedroom. Seamus grins up at him, smiling and cheeky and cheeks blooming roses. “We can’t do it on the bed.”

 

“We’ll change the sheets.” Dean shuts him up with his mouth and then moves his hands lower and stops him talking for the next hour. The air is hot and the blankets tangle round their legs and there’s an undignified, indefinite part of time where they’re kissing up top and trying to kick their legs free on the bottom and it’s hot and sweaty and heaving and Dean feels something and halfway through realises they’ll need to go shopping if they want to eat anything for dinner.

 

After it’s died out, Seamus settles against his side like a dog going down for a nap. The car alarm is still going off. A shadow waves across the window. Seamus is nearly drifting off to sleep and he oughtn’t because they both need a shower and once the damp patch underneath them cools down it’s going to feel absolutely disgusting and they really need to move and shower and eat and buy more food and he’s got to teach Seamus how to make sandcastles on the beach.

 

They’re here for another twelve days and Daisy and Daphne and Delilah can help him teach Seamus how to make sandcastles. Dean turns over and sleeps.

 

***

 

“Stop fussing, you look _fine_ ,” Seamus bats his hands away from his shirt buttons and holds them instead.

 

Dean wrinkles his nose, “I feel _weird_. When’s the last time I wore a proper shirt?”

 

“I… don’t actually remember.” _Before the war_ neither of them says. It makes it easier, to let the words die in their mouths. He looks over at the table, where lies a cake held in an old shoebox they found in the wardrobe with a brand that went bankrupt five years ago and a pile of jellybeans and Freddos from the newsagents on the corner.

 

“We’re going to be late,” Seamus says to turn his thoughts away from the burning forest.

 

“We’re _surprising_ him, Seamus. He doesn’t even know we’re coming. We can’t be ‘late’.”

 

“Oh- shut up!” he yanks him down by the collar and kisses him harshly until they have to break apart.

 

“Carry on like that and we’ll never get there at all.”

 

He steps back and brushes himself off, “Well, we can’t be having that, can we?” and takes the battered shoebox from the table. Dean gets the sinking feeling that he’s angry with him, but he can’t work out why.

 

Stepping into the fire amidst floo powder and blinking the soot away, he wanders why death eaters didn’t just floo everywhere to get past the protection charms, or if Hermione’s explained this to him already and he should have listened to her.

 

***

 

It takes a few moments to realise that Neville’s shriek is delight and not fear, but then he’s hurrying over the mess they’ve made of the carpet to hug them- one with each arm- and crushes the shoebox before Seamus can rescue it from his clutches. “Neville!”

 

“What are you guys doing here?!” but he sounds delighted and Seamus’ bad mood is gone and he looks over Neville’s shoulder with half his face squished and smiles at Dean and draws out of Dean’s mouth words that are bright yellow with happiness.

 

“We’re here because you’re brilliant, Neville Longbottom,” Dean says. The words are muffled and come out warped but they’re brimming over which is more than can be said for most of the words he’s spoken in three months. They feel like they came from him. A line connects something deep in him and the words and they finally feel real.

 

“I am?”

 

“Yes you are,” Dean tells him in a tone that brooks no argument. “You really, really are. Just the…”

 

“The _bestest_ ” Seamus finishes for him, smiling a brilliant smiles at him and Dean sags a bit lower. All if forgiven.

 

Neither of them say the praise has come about sixteen years too late because Neville looks so happy, but the praise has come about sixteen years too bloody late and Neville is happy _still_ , God, Dean feels less broken by comparison. Or maybe Dean has never felt broken, just empty. Not broken, and he can’t decide which of these options is worse because then he’ll have lost something but then he’s not smashed into a million pieces and either way he is in the company of two people who do not expect him to have to be alright and that should be the easiest part of this infinite mourning but somehow it is the worst. There is no solution to any of it so he stops thinking.

 

“You’re the second person who’s said that to me today.”

 

“Oh? Who’s the first?”

 

“We are!” two delighted voices from the two delighted girls who streak over the living room carpet to grasp the three of them even tighter- Dean didn’t think they were falling before, but he knows for sure they are not at risk of it now.

 

The praise came sixteen years too late and now, like buses, it has all come at once in a deluge.

 

“You’re the bestest,” Luna tells the boy buried in their midst.

 

“ _Guys…_ ”

 

“You are!” Ginny insists. Dean catches her fingers over her girlfriend’s shoulder by accident and draws her eyes on him. He tries to smile at her. The smile is returned: glad and wiling. Dean smiles a bit wider, glad lately no space seems too wide to be breached by reaching for a friend’s fingers.

 

“ _Guys_ ,” his face emerges, flustered and touched. “I can’t breathe. I mean, I love you. But can you maybe” his head bobs and on cue they all step back slightly and realise just how tight their own chests have become. “Well I’m glad you’re all here,” he finishes lamely, looking anti-climatic and panicking over this duller state of affairs. “If I’d known you were coming I’d have gone shopping.”

 

“Don’t worry-“ Seamus bites in “-we brought cake. Oh… uh, if one of you wouldn’t mind magic-ing it back together?”

 

“I will,” Ginny volunteers, fiery halo round her head. Smiling. Happy. It’s an infinite summer where everyone is happy and nothing hurts.

 

“You do that,” Dean agrees. “I’ll go put the kettle on.”

 

***

 

“So Harry told us all about these muggle things called credit cards and how you need a credit score.”

 

“What’s one of them?”

 

“Like… Dean! Tell Seamus what a credit card is.”

 

“Um, you know when we watched that movie and they paid for their food with a card? Well, that. But... the bank pays it? Then you pay the bank later?”

 

“…Huh?”

 

“So… a credit score shows you can be trusted to pay money back. Am I right, Dean?”

 

“Yeah! That’s basically it. Never heard of it before, though. Why don’t they just check to see if you have enough money?”

 

“I dunno. I asked Harry and he doesn’t know either. But we need one if we ever want to buy a muggle house.”

 

“Why’d you need to buy a muggle house?”

 

“We can’t all live in our granny’s garden, Neville!”

 

“Alright, alright, _Merlin_! It’s not a garden, technically, anyway.”

 

“No. It’s a mansion.”

 

“An _estate_.”

 

“It’s _not_!”

 

“Oh my God. Is your granny Cruella De Vil?”

 

“Who? What are you two laughing at- who’s Cruella De Vil? Luna, do you know what they’re talking about?”

 

“No. but they’re so happy that they’re attracting Trugle Bats around their heads, if that makes you feel any better.”

 

“… Can’t say it does.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Anyway! Harry said you have to buy some things first. To get a credit score. And then you pay the bills back and they let you buy a house.”

 

“Is that why you brought loads of candy necklaces with you? Because you need a credit score?”

 

“Yes. We also got a saucepan, too.”

 

“…”

 

“Hah! You don’t- you don’t buy a house by buying a saucepan!”

 

“Did you have to get it on finance?”

 

“Is it one of them really good Teflon ones?”

 

“No, we found it at Poundstretcher.”

 

“We were hoping to buy a toaster, too, but the bank wouldn’t give us the money.”

 

***

 

Dean falls asleep that night sitting on the floor, mess all around him, bent with his top half on the sofa and Seamus dozing off on the other side. They’ll both wake up with crooked necks in the morning. It is late. The town clock tolls. Dean can feel his eyes shutting. One. Two. Three. Fo-

 

***

 

XXVII.

 

_Sunday 3 rd November 1996_

 

They are getting into bed and they are lying side by side looking up at the dark canopy and holding hands and it is enough. And they are talking, buoyed on by the other mutterings of the other boys and girls who have ended up in an impromptu sleepover and one of them glances over towards the open curtains. They can just make out the shadows framed between the hangings all the way down at the other end of the bed; other teenagers curled on various mattresses and pillows and cushions. It’s black like their own bed’s curtains and occasionally the mass squirrels with a movement and fluctuates or flows in and out with a collective breathing. They just squeeze the other’s hand tighter; put their cold feet on each other’s calves and wonder where they’ll be next year.

 

***

 

XXVIII.

 

_Tuesday 1 st September 1998_

 

Dean cannot get out of bed.

 

***

 

XXIX.

 

_Saturday 6 th January 1996_

 

“Dean,” he meets his best friend’s eyes and tries not to flinch. “I’m alright, I promise.”

 

***

 

XXX.

 

_Tuesday 25 th August 1998_

 

When he wakes up, it is to coughing and running water. Staggering into the kitchen, he realises Seamus is washing his shirt in the sink. The one that fell prey to his cherry-flavoured ice lolly when it melted yesterday because he was too distracted by a bold seagull picking closer and closer to where they sat on a bench eating chips for tea.

 

He’s leant the canvas on the window sill to dry out quicker for him. Dean stumbles over and wraps his arms around him tightly. Breaches the height distance by bending down to rest his chin on Seamus; shoulder, which does nothing to improve the pain in his beck, but he stays where he is. Seamus kisses the only part of him he can reach- Dean’s bicep, as it happens- and digs his nose into the skin their briefly before turning back to his sartorial disaster.

 

There’s about eight different ways Seamus could set this scene on fire. The sun is coming in through the window. Ariana Dumbledore smiles out of a canvas with flowers in her hair. Dean can see the sea.

 


End file.
